Is K-12 Shifting Towards Tacit Knowledge?

A lot of conversations that I've been a part of recently have emphasised the need for "deep learning", "active learning", "authentic learning" or "learning in the real world", etc., and at heart it seems to me that all of these activities appear to place an emphasis on students doing something rather than memorizing something. The role of the teacher becomes one of coaching students how to do things better, how to become a critical thinker, or a keen observer and so on. To some degree these kinds of activities appear to fall under the category of "tacit knowledge", or a kind of knowledge by doing that is hard to capture and explain. Most physical activity falls under this category of knowledge. Tacit knowledge is often contrasted with explicit knowledge, defined as a knowledge of concrete things like facts or discrete concepts.

The odd thing about these conversations between educators is that there is never a reference to the distinction between these forms of knowledge. I know that my professional education was surprisingly mum on the difference, but it would stand to reason that particular teaching techniques would be more successful in dealing with particular types of knowledge. It is notoriously difficult trying to get eastablished teachers to change their practice and I can't help wondering whether being able to draw a link between teaching practices and the transfer of particular knowledge types might be helpful.

Transient Thoughts

I am coming to believe that what we call schooling has as much to do with learning as professional ballroom dancing does to actual dance.

A Conflict Between Two Paradigms

On Friday a colleague and I had a lazy afternoon conversations about what happens when two groups interact with each other around a common purpose. The only problem is that each group is operating under radically different assumptions but believes that these assumptions are shared by the other group. We were thinking of course about the differing viewpoints that students and teachers might have about school, communication, and technology.

This morning we stumbled upon a video posted by Angela Maiers, who we've been following on Twitter for a long time now. Angela's website is dedicated to 21st Century Learning and is a treasure trove of resources.

The Power of Twitter

Twitter turned three years old last week and has earned a lot of recent press regarding it's phenomenal growth last year (reported in some cases as reaching 1400%), but the more critical coverage has been based on Twitter's expanding search functionality. There's a good summary article at the end of our post.

In my recent joint ADETA presentation on mobile learning we talked about Twitter as part of an integrated new approach to schooling. What we liked about Twitter was that it allowed students to have conversations based not on geographical proximity, but on ideas and themes. Twitter's search function makes this possible, allowing students to find timely access to information they need, regardless of where in the world the informants happen to live. Similarly, the topic based nature of Twitter conversations enables students to ask questions and receive help from experts in their field.

Of course, one of the problems with information relaid via Twitter is it's accuracy, and so teachers would do well to encourage students to test the veracity of such information, a fitting skill in this day and age.


To read the article, click below.
http://www.winningtheweb.com/twitter-future-search-google.php

Another tidbit from SXSW'09

As more and more educational processes occur online and student collaboration gains grounds, teachers need to re-think the kinds of activities that students engage in. Derek Powazek has a few suggestions:

Gaming and Educating

This clip is from the SXSW 2009 Interactive Conference. If I wasn't presenting last week at the ADETA Conference, this is where I would have loved to have been. Maybe next year.

ADETA09

The adeta conference concluded on Friday and I was quite surpised by how many people stayed late in the afternoon on Thursday to see my presentation on mobile learning. It is a hot topic and I hope they weren't disappointed. Aside from the apparent gathering momentum of twitter in education, one of the things that pleased me most about the conference was the prevailing attitude among a significant number of educators. For a lot of these teachers, there appeared to be a realization that technology in the classroom needs to be about more than just a way to deliver remote content. Quite a few presenters seemed to echo our own mobile learning theme that if students can acess content from anywhere at anytime, then what are we doing with them when they are actually with us in class (do they even need to be in class?). The problem seems to be that the teachers who hold these beliefs do not know where the next step needs to be. The exhibitors and administrators at the conference still seemed to be hung up on the content delivery paradigm. The momentum for change appears to be there, we just need to figure out where to direct it.