What are the questions you think are the most interesting in the digital age?
How does education change in a digital age?
There are a number of parts to this question with one of my favorite being, how do people educate themselves using the internet?
People are using the internet who have very little previous educational experience, which means that many of them have no skepticism or judgement regarding source material. Everything is valid. Using the same assumption that if it is in print it must be true, then if "I read it on a website," the information must also be true. One of the more interesting examples were the conspiracy theories that built around the 9/11 attacks. The government spent thousands of hours of investigation, but a website could trump the research. As a digital researcher, I have to be vigilant to the background of information contained on websites, blogs, and forums. What makes the information applicable to real life? Is someone just telling a good story?
That's the bad side. On the positive side, how do consumers make better decisions? I am using a broad definition of consumer to include researchers, medical patients, cooks, and anyone who wants something they don't have. How do they gain the fundamental knowledge about a subject? If a consumer researches how to build a barbeque pit, do they need to know the strengths of various concrete mixtures and the firing temperatures of bricks or do they just need a plan and some suggestions. Can the reader trust those suggestions? Is this research as valid as a traditional education?
How do we tie internet research into a traditional education? Sitting in a classroom still has the greatest validity for employers, but attending distance classes is gaining greater respect as it becomes more common. What happens when the classroom in any form disappears? How do you find a valid measure for an education? These are probably some of the same questions raised when libraries became commonplace. I can just imagine, "what would happen if people started reading on their own without any direction from educators?" We may be cresting another wave in the same ocean.
What are the most interesting online environments?
Now: Any game that is real enough to make you feel immersed in the environment.
Future: A visual moo that reproduces an onsite classroom, including computer projector, handouts, and whiteboard.
1 comment:
People who want to misuse or miconstrue data are going to do it regardless of the source. As to your point about conspiracy theorists: they have been around since long before the Internet and will be around long after we get our data from implanted chips or whatever. It seems like conspiracy theories have more to do with the theorists psyches than their education or experience. I read something a few days ago by an Ivy League professor who is a huge CT. They are skeptical, but of different things than those of us who are not on that same track. There are also many people who believe that if they see something in a movie, it must be based on fact. It took me months to convince my teenage Sunday School students that the movie "Dogma" was not theology.
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