Professional Documents
Culture Documents
John Koetsier
UBC
Intelligence in a Sea of Data 2
students are intended to come to know certain things about the nature of the world we
live in. But what exactly does that mean? Merriam-Webster tells us that the word science
comes, via various detours through linguistic byways, from the Latin present participle of
scire: to know. While the etymology of a word does not determine contemporary
connotation or denotation, it is the case that science is a (and probably the) dominant
Western means of knowing, understanding, and therefore learning about the world today.
But when just about anything anyone wants to know is a simple search away, what,
specifically, constitutes education in the age of Google? And, is it enough to know about,
interviewed him recently. During our discussion of educational technology, I asked him if
there are any ways that technology hinders learning. His answer is both insightful and
At times it may end up giving people a real quick fix to a problem and they may
not be actually forced to think it through. Since Google, students need an answer
quickly, so they don't know how to use a glossary or index. They want something
right away, and to look back to a previous paragraph is too much effort.1
He’s actually saying two things here. First, that students in some cases are seeking
1
Interview with veteran teacher conducted January 27, 2009, by John Koetsier.
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quick answers that others have created – received wisdom, so to speak - so they don’t
conjectures that lead to principles. And second, he’s saying that not only have students in
some cases lost their desire to undertake the heavy intellectual lifting that is part of the
traditional learning process … they’ve also even lost the ability to personally seek for
answers. After all, why read or even scan an old-fashioned dead tree tome when a
are using digital or analog tools, if students don’t want to figure out the answer and also
won’t strain themselves to find it personally, teaching anything beyond search and
technology writer and author Nicholas Carr, who wrote the widely-discussed article Is
Google Making Us Stupid2 in mid-2008. In it, Carr cites pathologist and educator Bruce
Friedman, who recently confessed that he has now “almost totally lost the ability to read
and absorb a longish article on the web or in print.3” Carr himself has the same issue …
starts to drift after two or three pages.” Is our ability to learn being negatively affected by
It’s not just popular authors, either. Deep learning, the kind of learning that
uncovers associations, connects theoretical frameworks, and gets behind the what to the
2
Retrieved February 4, 2009 from http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200807/google
3
Retrieved February 9 2009 from
http://labsoftnews.typepad.com/lab_soft_news/2008/02/how-google-is-c.html
Intelligence in a Sea of Data 4
why, may be at risk. Educational researchers have noted the tendency of science
instruction to be more learning about than learning … more getting the answer than
deriving it (Bencze and Bowen, 2009). Bencze and Bowen have shown that this may be
partly due to the fact that knowledge that is easier to teach than knowledge how (2009).
And this study focused on the science teachers … never mind the students.
What’s happening here? Is it just the older generation complaining that things
aren’t the way they used to be, and the hard work they did in their day has been lost in the
new era of the slacker student? Or, is there a fundamental shift occurring in the kinds of
intelligence that our education – note I did not say school – privileges?
Marshal McLuhan, of course, taught us that technology, or media, don’t just allow
communication and conversation … they play favorites. Media are not neutral; they are
of learning, than others … as expressed in the famous phrase “the medium is the
message” (McLuhan, 1959). As David Olsen writes, ongoing shifts in primary media
over the past centuries have fueled “conceptual shifts” which have created “altered
The logical question is: what do different primary media technologies privilege?
Looking back and seeing the great shifts over centuries and even millennia from oral to
literate to digital media, what are these altered conceptions? Clearly hyperlinked and
searchable digital media technologies de-emphasize memory and privilege search and
synthesis. Their easy accessibility may also reduce the primacy of formal education and
boost the importance of informal learning. Some think so, and argue that this is a positive
Intelligence in a Sea of Data 5
transformative change. Fischer and Konomi talk about technology and media helping us
postulates that blogs are more important than formal certificates, and immersive social
games will become the textbook (2007). Others speculate whether libraries remain
relevant in an era when video and audio production is in the ascendancy and people are
less and less likely to read (Jeske, 2008). Wouldn’t we be better off simply focusing on
new technologies, new media, and providing information in ever-more convenient and
digestable packaging?
Those who don’t favor such progressive rhetoric, of course, can take comfort in
the fact that for all of the societal change we’ve undergone in the last 50 years, and all the
technology that has invaded the home and the enterprise in the last 20, few things seem to
have disrupted the 18th century factory model of education, at least in most North
American and European schools (Albirini, 2007). As Kritt and Winegar put it, it seems
that “plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose” (2007). Even with huge sums being spent
installing smartboards … there have not really been significant gains in educational
achievement, some argue, or even real change in the way education takes place. John
Bailey, the Director of Educational Technology for the U.S. Department of Education,
put it this way: "[T]here still is very little scientifically based research to gauge the
effectiveness of technology" (Murray, 2002). Is that true, or are the more pollyana-ish –
This is a critical question with varying answers. But what is clear – in my opinion
- is that teaching and learning in a networked 21st century is a different proposition than
teaching and learning in a paper 18th century … just as that was different than teaching
and learning in an oral 5th century BC. Whether the nature of intelligence, or what it
I have a lot of sympathy for these points of view, since I have been using and
creating technology for many years. At a young age I was fascinated by technology - in
elementary school we had a Mac or two adorning the back wall of each classroom. They
came with a simple programming language named, appropriately enough, Basic, and we
played with it, learning how to display lines on the screen, print out nasty things about the
teacher, and generally have fun while learning. But that was pre-internet, pre-Google, and
walking it down the hall to another computer. Answers were available on this computer
only if you chose to spend the effort necessary to find them yourself.
students to also have the ability to work it out for themselves. “We're all tempted to take
the path of least resistance,” he said, but we need to be able to use all kinds of resources,
including print, and be able to work from first principles to more complex knowledge. He
saw the need for so-called “21st century” skills, including synthesis of many different
resources to create something new, or at least a new perspective, but worried that “many
don’t do this.”
In the already-mentioned article “Is Google Making Us Stupid,” Carr travels back
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in time a few thousand years to Plato’s Phaedrus. Socrates is lamenting the then-young
science of writing, which he felt would be detrimental to the exercise of memory. Even
worse, people could read the wisdom of others as codified in a written manuscript, parrot
it to others, and then “be thought very knowledgeable when they are for the most part
quite ignorant.” Quel dommage! Very obviously, as another ancient writer wearily noted,
there is nothing new under the sun: we have been complaining about how easy the
But the point is worth considering. Whether in Science or English class, what
good is it to educate, to teach, and to train, if students will simply search for someone
else’s answer? Is this the sort of intelligence that is privileged by technology … whether
database?
what it privileges. Certainly, digital technology enables re-use of existing knowledge. But
is that all? The Partnership for 21st Century Skills is fairly sure they know what skills
politicians, and educators who together have formed a framework laying out the skills
they see students needing in the future. Critical skills they identify include synthesis
skills: skills to find information, manipulate it, assess it, and create new information
based on it. The Partnership is very open about their purpose: building “effective citizens,
workers and leaders.4” And the reason for their existence is no secret either: current
4
Retrieved February 13, 2009 from http://www.21stcenturyskills.org/index.php?
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educational models and practice are not meeting the need. As their mission states:
There is a profound gap between the knowledge and skills most students learn in
school and the knowledge and skills they need in typical 21st century
and to carefully consider not only their composition but also motivation, there is no
reason to throw out the baby with the bathwater. Many researchers and practitioners
agree, some going so far as to say that the old “3Rs” are not as relevant today as the new
“3Rs:” rigor, relevance, and real world skills (McCoog, 2008). Alexander travels a
(2009).
The reality is, in my opinion, that the historically recent flood of data that
inundates learners today is both qualitatively and quantitatively different from the media
and technologies that we’ve had in the past. There is a validity to the need for new skills
and abilities that will equip students for coping with an overload of information … and
computerized lab simulations, which enable students to run in virtual reality what they
could never do in reality – such as change the mass of planets and see how their orbits are
option=com_content&task=view&id=188&Itemid=110
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affected. Particularly, he appreciated the fact that simulations can be run and re-run with
different starting presets. These are fun, quick, and visual, he said, and that not only
appeals to a certain type of student, it also makes “real” (in spite of the virtuality) what
can be complex, abstract ideas. This, he said, accelerates learning. I agree. Shift is
necessary in the way we teach, to some extent in what we teach, and also in how we
assess knowledge.
And yet, caution is in order. Nicholas Carr quotes Tufts University developmental
psychologist and author Maryanne Wolf, “We are not only what we read. We are how we
read” (Car, 2008). Her point, I think, is broader than reading. It’s a similar point –
perhaps even the same, restated – as McLuhan’s medium is the message. Using the
digital oracle qua oracle will make us stupid – potentially causing us to resemble Orwell’s
remnants of the leisure class in The Time Traveller, the Eloi, who have relied so much on
others to work and think for them that they have lost the ability themselves, and
We need to realize that instant search and retrieval is not intelligence; it is fuel for
intelligence. That fuel can be utilized and harnessed with 21st century skills … but not at
the cost of some very basic 20th century skills. For example, acquiring higher-level math
skills without knowing, instantly and almost subconsciously, the basic math facts, is very
difficult (Lee, Stansbery, Kubina, Wannarka, 2005). The challenge is that mental energy
and limited short-term memory slots are expended on the basic math facts and are
unavailable for the higher-order operations: it’s simply too CPU-intensive. There are
corollaries, I think, in many disciplines, especially the sciences. Data can’t be efficiently
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used to construct higher order knowledge when none of it is readily, instantly available in
So here’s the sythesis: we need 21st Century Skills … without losing some of the
20th century smarts. Without the “21st Century” skills, we will not be able to cope with the
never-ending datastream. Without the 20th century smarts, we will not be able to do more
than parrot, and sometimes rearrange, ideas that others thought before us.
This will help us learn in science, math, and all subject classes … and it will
References
Albirini, Abdulkafi, 2007. The Crisis of Educational Technology, and the Prospect of
Alexander, Bryan, 2008. Web 2.0 and Emergent Multiliteracies. Theory Into Practice,
v47 n2 p150-160.
v23 n4 p338-350.
Kritt, David W., Ed.; Winegar, Lucien T., Ed, 2007. Education and Technology: Critical
Lee, David L.; Stansbery, Sam; Kubina, Richard, Jr.; Wannarka, Rachel, 2005. Explicit
Intelligence in a Sea of Data 13
McLuhan, Marshall, 1959. Myth and Mass Media. Daedalus, Vol. 88, No. 2 pp. 339-348.
McCoog, Ian J., 2008. 21st Century Teaching and Learning. Retrieved February 12,
2009, from
http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/contentdelivery/servlet/ERICServlet?
accno=ED502607
http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/top-news/index.cfm?
print&i=34767&CFID=942720&CFTOKEN=47613617
Olson, David R., 1988. Mind and Media: The Epistemic Functions of Literacy. The
Partnership for 21st Century Skills, 2009. Our Mission. Retrieved February 11, 2009 from
http://www.21stcenturyskills.org/index.php?
option=com_content&task=view&id=188&Itemid=110
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Tuomi, Ilkka, 2007. Learning in the Age of Networked Intelligence. European Journal of
http://www.meaningprocessing.com/personalPages/tuomi/articles/LearningInTheAgeOfN
etworkedIntelligence.pdf
Windschitl, Mark; Thompson, Jessica; Braaten, Melissa, 2008. Beyond the Scientific