Dr. Scott McLeod (Iowa State University) discusses how various portable devices that connect to the Internet have made it possible to get instant answers to many questions. He then asks:
- In light of this new information technology/access landscape, what do students still need to memorize?
- What are we now asking students to memorize that they don’t really need to?
- How can we better use precious school time?
As he notes, there will still be core knowledge that students need to know. But perhaps we need to rethink what that core is for the subjects we teach...I'm thinking about the prof in my graduate program who made us memorize all the formulas for his statistics class.
This is an interesting point. Maybe some of the time spent memorizing facts and dates could be spent on critical thinking?
Posted by: Trina | January 04, 2008 at 12:14 PM
Absolutely Trina. Our job as educators is to determine what IS the core knowledge needed in a subject and then help our students learn how to use that information to do research and solve problems. Thanks for commenting.
Posted by: Delaney Kirk | January 04, 2008 at 09:20 PM