I don’t quite know whether to be more irked or tickled that Dorothea and I are thinking along similar lines, but her remarks on Authority, the Web, and Print state exactly, exactly, mind you, what I was planning to say tomorrow evening as part three of the presentation to the Theology and Pedagogy in Cyberspace opening session:
One thing struck me, though, and I thought I’d share. We ought to be grateful to the web—for making evident problems that people have had all along evaluating source authority. The web didn’t create these problems; the web is only making them far more visible (and in some cases risible).I mean, really, turn people loose on a large enough collection of books, and will they have any better luck separating out the ludicrous and the outdated? Doubt it. These are the same people who believe whatever gets said on TV, you know? But if you ask them if they can evaluate sources, they’ll tell you yes.
The problem isn’t the web. The problem is evaluating authority, and that’s a far larger and more complex problem.
One of the leading lessons in teaching technological learners is that people can be credulous and uncritical in any information medium. In person, in print, on TV, at movies, online, wherever, people do not attain critical judgment just from being exposed to more information, or to information in a different shape and texture. (And, although Steve may not be wrong to suppose that “there are more checks likely to halt production on the way from conceptual work to physical document for printed materials than for web materials,” I find that sufficient printed-and-bound drivel populates library shelves that there’s no percentage in treating print as effectively insulated from the propagation of garbage.)
The single greatest opportunity for people to cultivate critical judgment comes by way of interactions that involve questioning, modeling, cooperative inquiry. Technology inevitably plays a role in those interactions. But if we don’t succeed in helping students develop a sense for sizing up information, our sophisticated technological pedagogy will little benefit the cause of raising up critical, articulate, thoughtful, deliberative students.
Posted by AKMA at April 15, 2004 03:21 PM | TrackBackAnd where could I find those interactions that involve questioning, modeling, cooperative inquiry? I have only seen a space for such an interactin on the web. Of course this may have something to do with my status of a blue collar worker. Do those other special people have their special places for pedagogy to raise their young special people? Most museums close at 6pm and I have to work. My lunch is only 30 minutes and I can't go anywhere out of the building.
Posted by: Citizen K! at April 15, 2004 08:24 PMYes! Good education, whatever the format, has always been about questioning, modeling, and cooperative inquiry.
Having taught undergrads from the early 80s to the mid-90s, I spanned the transition from primarily paper-text based research to primarily electronic-based research and the problem of teaching discernment did not change. What did change is that paper-text resources were available primarily in libraries where someone (professors, librarians) had already made an intitial judgment to eliminate the specious and blatantly incorrect resources. It was possible to immerse students primarily in well-reasoned and well-supported arguments until they were familiar enough with those qualities to be able to discern whether they existed in other matter they might encounter. The wealth of information now made available by technology forces people to make discerning decisions before they have the skills to do so.
To respond to Citizen K, if you are open to the suggestion, you might investigate an adult discussion group at an Anglican/Episcopal church. The best of them will include questioning, modelling, and cooperative inquiry.
Posted by: Holly at April 16, 2004 08:35 AM