It’s difficult for educators to discourage an inquisitive mind, but every now and then you get a question that has you scratching your head for all the wrong reasons.
Let’s not call them stupid questions. We’ll call them lazy questions. You’d recognise them immediately – the sort of questions that just cry out for a Google search. Now – if you’re feeling a little bit narky – you’ve got the perfect response: Let me Google that for you.
Just type in the search query e.g. What was the hottest temperature in Melbourne?
Let me Google that for you will then provide a URL you can send to the person who asked the question. They’ll receive a little demo on how to use Google and the results they need.
Although this is clearly a bit of fun, it does touch on a theme I’ll return to in this blog from time to time – in the age of Google, what value is there in teaching a fact? It seems now more than ever there is a need to address critical literacy. We need to learn how to dig deeper, not only find out what the facts are but which ones are significant and worth knowing.
In light of this, my next post will concern itself with using facts to effect social change. More on that in a couple of days.
Putting all ’silly questions’ aside ………. The question of ‘Do facts really matter, are they important? is a fundamental one for those of us designing curriculum and struggling with the demands of curriculum coverage. Perhaps a more useful question is ‘What matters most? What’s worth learning?’ and following up any responses with why. I think to come to any place with such questions we have to dig deep, we have to do it with a great awareness of the world we live in and we have to engage students in this quest. While any area of learning will have some factual knowledge, and hopeful drawn from a variety of sources and perspectives, it is what we do with these ‘facts’ that matters, where do they take us. This reminds me of what a teacher we have been working with said, she commented, that yes the students had researched and gathered a range of ‘factual information’ but it is what the students did with this information that was powerful, how they went on to inquire, critique and reconstruct their understandings with each other. So let’s not stop at the facts, but let’s use them to take us further in our own search for understanding.
[...] ยป No such thing as a stupid question? Contemporary Learning in the age of Google, what value is there in teaching a fact? It seems now more than ever there is a need to address critical literacy. We need to learn how to dig deeper, not only find out what the facts are but which ones are significant and worth knowing. [...]