Thinking About Learning

My friend, John Geanangel, shared this original quote yesterday:
“Give a child an answer – you have solved their immediate problem.
Teach a child to Google – you‘ve taught them to solve their own problems.”

I think this phrase beautifully sums up the necessary shift in pedagogy that needs to take place in our thinking, in our planning, and in our classrooms.  When I was a child, the focus of education was simply memorizing math facts, memorizing sight words, or memorizing important dates in history. Now, there is simply too much information available to memorize it all.

George Siemens reports in elearnspace:

IDC offered a report in 2007 on information growth, and now provides 2008 edition (.pdf): “In this companion to last year’s EMC-sponsored white paper, IDC again calibrates the size (bigger than first thought) and the growth (faster than expected) of the digital universe through 2011″. The main website also allows people to calculate their digital footprint.
The field of informatics (i.e. study of information) is not very developed. We are all impacted by information growth and development – in fact this is one of the areas that most impacts us – and yet we have at best a rudimentary understanding of the nature of information. Sure, we have people telling us information is exploding…that it’s overwhelming…and so on. But that’s a bit like saying the patient has a fever. I’d like to know more. I’m surprised at how little we actually understand of information itself, especially when considering the tremendous impact on our lives.

The study, The Diverse and Exploding Digital Universe, predicts that between 2006 and 2011, digital information will grow ten-fold in five years, from under 200 exabytes to 1800 exabytes. So what does this mean for educators?  There’s already so much information available that I can’t take it all in, and neither can our students.  Our focus as educators must strongly shift to teaching our students how to research, explore, and find the informational resources they need.  We need a greater emphasis on conceptual learning and application of learning strategies.

All of the second graders in my school learned the definition of the word research this year, and they have continued to learn throughout the year through research projects. They understand that research is finding needed information and that sometimes they have to search again and again to find what they need.  They have made connections to see that finding the location and time of the movie they want to see is research.  One little girl came up to me in the hall one morning and proudly told me that she had done “research” at home last night to find out about her baby sister’s rash. She has begun her journey to become information literate.

Yes, John has it right…“Teach a child to Google – you‘ve taught them to solve their own problems.”