Subject: [IFETS-DISCUSSION:1346] Re: IFETS-DISCUSSION Non Linear Learning
From: Bill Ellis (tranet@rangeley.org)
Date: Sun 11 Mar 2001 - 17:07:34 MET
Date: Sun, 11 Mar 2001 12:07:34 -0400 Subject: [IFETS-DISCUSSION:1346] Re: IFETS-DISCUSSION Non Linear Learning From: "Bill Ellis" <tranet@rangeley.org>
Someone on this thread (I think Dennis, but Ican't find in now) mentioned
briefly the word "context" that brougt me to a discussion of "Content" vs
"Context" on another list. This discussion had nothing to do with
computers. It was on the difference between the Indstrial Era and the
Information Era.
The point was, that in the Industrial era we were interested in
"content." Our schools goal was to transfer to each student enough knowledge
and skill content to last a life time. I trained with a lot of electronic
knowledge, for example. When I graduated I was equipped (I and the schools)
thought, or a life time in which I could design and build any equipment I
needed. The fact turns out that solid state physics, micro chips, and other
technolgies made my expertise in vacuum tubes, relays, circuity and wiring
obsolete in a few years. In every discipline new knowledge is replacing old
knowledge at a faster and faster rate. So we can no longer build our
education system on the "transfer of content." We must invent a new learning
system that intills "context" in its learners.
Workers in the Information Age must know how to live in an age of continuing
changing context. This imnplies a lifelong learning system that gives the
opportunity to exist in a system of ever developing and changing skills and
knowledge. Rather than thinking, as some educators and politicians have, of
"going back to school" every x years. We need to think in terms of
"learning communities" in which continual learning is the way of life.
The computer and cyberspace are uniquely suited for this emerging
lifestyle.
We can now rest at ease that we live in a everchanging world of jumble. We
have the means to extract what we want when we want it and how we want out
ofthat jumble. We do not need to cram our heads with knowledge that will be
out of date by the time we "graduate." We do need to learn to live in a
world of ever changeing knowedge with the know-how and confidence that we
can change directions any time we want.
IMHO this suggests that we do not need a linear story as much as we need a
way to feel comfortable in a world in which we can not know or understand
the knowledge we may need next week. This perhaps is more like humans lived
once upon a time. Perhaps in the days of the cave. Or perhaps before the
invention of printing, before the days of linear thinking, before the way
we've come be beliweve is normal. A world of ever changing new context.
Bill Ellis
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