So let’s just get to the heart of this article in the Wall Street Journal on the changing face of cheating in schools:
By some estimates, at least seven million new Web pages are added every day. In a competitive global labor market, where white-collar jobs are increasingly outsourced to other countries, being able to find and synthesize information about the World Bank could be more crucial than memorizing the date it opened. Failing to teach kids how to navigate in the knowledge economy, says Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist Frank Levy, “is like putting them on the track with[out] the locomotive.”
Do I hear an “Amen?” There is so much to think about in this article that I might actually be convinced that we’re starting to figure this out, that the old way doesn’t work, that we need to rethink the approach. That we need to REINVENT!
Hey, Ford can do it…
Hmmm… In the short term, I completely agree that this is the way to go. However, a while ago I read a great article recommended in Wendy’s Environmental Blog. The article, “The Long Emergency” discusses life after fossil fuels. Based on that article, animal husbandry, fire building, and self-defense would be even MORE relevant to our students’ long term survival than online research skills.
However, I’m not going to drop my class blogs, wikis, Moodle’s and other social learning tools to teach basic survival, but maybe we should be teaching them how to find THAT information. (;