Hello all! I miss you what with these snow/ice/60 degree days that we've been having. I'm trying to put my finger on things for New Media when all I can think of is "re-newing" learning. If this goes too far down the education path, feel free to join or chide me.
Problem: when did "let's google it" become the answer, instead of the tool?
It seems to me that all the assembly, augmentation and linking of material, facts, items, information, stuff, is only as good as the one who actually "googles" and finds out something s/he needs to know. If you google anything and are satisfied that the first entry (read: wikipedia) and in fact, just skim that for whatever "fact" you needed in order to answer the question...is this less or more dangerous than not knowing the answer in the first place? It is a false sense of knowledge, it is limited in perspective (and I am actually a fan of wikipedia, not a critic), and it certainly doesn't make you think--because you have the answer, right? So suppose you don't have any natural curiosity left? You don't look at other links, you don't even use the links that wikipedia authors have provided--you certainly don't notice the alert that occurs on almost every wikipedia page (for example) reminding us of what is missing (absence...hmmm....that is another post entirely).
When did you become curious? intellectually curious? we associate this with childhood, and we even said in class (weeks ago) that K-12 as currently designed doesn't seem to subscribe to the importance of intellectual curiosity. Is it a function of our disciplines? If so, why am I curious about math and science (and not just their history which I would call part of my discipline)? And how do we "breed" that sort of curiosity in our students?
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