Education 2.0
Friday, December 5th, 2008I picked up an article from Read Write Web in my feeds talking about how education is evolving, and basically that the availability of data on the internet suggests that we may not even need to memorise things for education like we used to.
To some, this might suggest that Gen Y might be getting lazy, but to me, it’s freeing up the brain to really work on other issues that can’t be as easily solved with a Google search.
One thing I never understood in my freshman year, was why I had to memorise how to create a balance sheet, when I wasn’t even an accounting student. Even if I was an accounting student, I refuse to believe that graduates leave school, get a job at an accounting firm, and sit down to create balance sheets without referring to anything because they memorised it in freshman year.
What I find more challenging, and relevant, is asking my how things apply. Or I might have all this data, but what does it mean? How do students analyse a situation from different angles and begin to think critically about issues.
Perhaps there will be some professions where memory work is still the key, but for the rest of us, probably not so.
More importantly, in response to this issue: are our educators ready to face the new wave of students who have mountains of information at their fingertips?
[Mark also picked up on the same issue and you can read his take on it here]
Tags: accounting, availability of data, balance sheet, digital natives, education, Gen Y, google search, millennials, read write web
