Tag Archives: learning

Questioning questions

One kernel I took away from something Adrian mentioned was that a significant problem in an age of distributed expertise, is that if you can’t ask good questions, you can’t find good answers.

I have always been an inquisitive person – something which my parents will vouch for as they spent many, many, many years tirelessly answering my questions that sprung up continuously throughout my days as a young’un.

After thinking about it, I started to realise that questions are not as straightforward as they may seem.

More Questions Than Answers

Image via flickr

Good questions lie somewhere in between the search to know what and the search to know how. Adrian said that this is also the difference between explicit and tacit knowledge. He suggested that traditional models of learning now need to be less about knowing what and more about knowing how. This is a tricky thing to do though, when most of our experience of institutional education concentrates solely on the knowing what part – with essays and tests focusing on the content, and not the act of forming the knowledge about the content.

Graham tells us in his reading on the essay:

High schools imitate universities. The seeds of our miserable high school experiences were sown in 1892, when the National Education Association “formally recommended that literature and composition be unified in the high school course.”…It’s no wonder if this seems to the student a pointless exercise, because we’re now three steps removed from real work: the students are imitating English professors, who are imitating classical scholars, who are merely the inheritors of a tradition growing out of what was, 700 years ago, fascinating and urgently needed work.”

So what do we do about it?

In week 5, Adrian had some suggestions including teaching kids to learn by doing. I agree wholeheartedly, as a strong kinaesthetic learner myself.

We need to relearn how to ask good questions.

When we ask the good questions, we’ll get the good answers.

Symposium 05: Network Literacy and Hypertext

Leftover Symposium 04 questions:

  1. Should network literacy be focused on in earlier education?

    • Can it be taught formally? 
      • Yes absolutely, and it should be. Some parts of it are already in practice, but not enough. Arduino is a service which is being used in school to teach children about how to make computers that can sense and control more of the physical world than the average desktop computer.
      • To some extent, you graduate from school being quite disempowered from networks because things have consistently been gatekept for you.
    • What do you think the solution is? Should we let kids teach themselves through doing?
      • Adrian believes the only way you ever learn anything is through doing, and I agree with him. I have, and always will be, a kinaesthetic learner.
      • Kids teach themselves how to do things. The issue is facilitating this in a way that they learn the how and why of things instead of the didactic ‘do this’ and ‘do that’.
      • School systems often take out the ability to think critically, as the architecture of school education is all tailored towards passing exams and getting good scores on essays and projects. You get trained to think that bell curves are natural order, but really they’re an educational ideology/construction. It’s been shown that information retention rates drop off exponentially after this type of learning, so it’s not necessarily a valuable method.

“We unlearn how to ask good questions. Problem with that in an age of distributed expertise, is that if you can’t ask good questions, you can’t find good answers. That’s the world we’re going into. Things are not black and white, it’s very grey and the skills you need to navigate this world are different.” – Adrian Miles

Symposium 05 questions:

  1. How is hypertext relevant to us as media practitioners?

    • Adrian says, how is it not? We deal with structures like that on almost all of our internet usage – such as YouTube (clicking from one video to another), Buzzfeed, news websites, Twitter, etc.
    • Elliott tells us of dual screening mentality which is a rising concern in the media industries, which says: ‘okay, we get your idea, but what’s the second screen going to be showing?’ As in, how are you going to utilise the network affordances by doing more? i.e. online webisodes, podcasts, building communities online, etc. Heritage media are doing this, but only slowly. They use it to shore up their existing model, as opposed to drastically changing it. They think ‘more is better’.
    • There’s a big gap, an opening to step in and properly use non-linear structures in storytelling. Adrian thinks that this is a waste that this isn’t working yet.
    • When moving into digital, content became highly granular (small chunks), and it becomes about the relationship between each other. Temporary relationships. This is how things get meaning, with the infinite multiple relationships between the parts. How we make stuff then had to change, because the end now doesn’t matter. And now the reader/audience power dynamic changes as well. Hypertext realised this.

  2. What predictions about network literacy should we be aware of?

    • Those who are network literate will engage with technology and come out on top better.
    • Media industries are changing drastically. However, history is not linear so we don’t know what’s going to happen, it’s a series of accidents.
    • Things to be aware of:
      • Physicality of the network – servers, infrastructure
      • Legal battles which may restrict or create affordances
      • Political battles, legislation, copyright.

  3. What are the consequences of being network illiterate?

    • You will have a reduced capacity to engage or develop appropriate strategies to engage.
    • Your only ability to understand will be through someone else – you will be dependent on them telling you what it means.  Think about what could this mean for creativity; corruption?

Week 02: Hands-on Kinaesthetic Learning

I have always been a kinaesthetic learner. I learn best when I am actively involved and participating through moving, doing, and touching.

For me, learning occurs when I use my hands and body to express a thought, idea or concept. Often this means that I like to move around when talking or listening, as is common for kinaesthetic learners, who prefer to do things due to their high energy levels. I am an innate explorer, who tends to relate facts or theories to my own experiences in order to solidify new knowledge.

In approaching this course, I have been prompted to think about what kinaesthetic learning means in the digital age. Like my other digital natives, I gather most of my information through online media. Does this mean that my habitual hands-on approach now translates to clicks of a mouse and typing on a keyboard? I learn by becoming physically involved with an artefact – whether that be by tracing my finger along a textbook with highlighter in hand, or by holding a moving image in my hand on my iPad. I am drawn towards physical products.

When setting up my mediafactory blog last week, I have come to understand that we are utilising the blog format so that we are working in the actual space we are talking and learning about. This way, we are constantly entwined. As is characteristic of this style of learning, we are now learning in ways which are directly meaningful to us. Adrian has already pointed out that the only tools we need for this course are a camera or camera-phone, a connection to the internet and the free software Korsakow. These devices are now carried in our pockets and bags wherever we go, and provide us with new and interesting ways to create and understand meaning. 

I’m really looking forward to seeing where this course will take me on my own personal learning experience. When thinking about the participation criteria I will need to draft this week, it is important for me to remember that I retain information best when I teach someone else about it, so I will aim to incorporate this appropriately.