An Operating System for the Mind. The core of the opposition to what are being called "21st century skills" is contained in the following argument: "Cognitive science teaches us that skills and knowledge are interdependent and that possessing a base of knowledge is necessary to the acquisition not only of more knowledge, but also of skills.
Skills can neither be taught nor applied effectively without prior knowledge of a wide array of subjects. " In response, I pose this question to the defenders of this 'base of knowledge', "why is a common core necessary for the teaching of skills, and why is testing of that core necessary. " And specifically, "the question isn't whether skills can be taught in isolation, but rather whether they must be taught in the context of some common base of knowledge and whether students ought to be tested on the basis of that knowledge.
The point I am making may seem difficult to understand intuitively, because it seems to suggest that you don`t need deep knowledge of any discipline. First. Dave’s Whiteboard » Blog Archive » 21st-century skills: Downes’s OS for the mind. Stephen Downes recently posted a detailed essay on “21st century skills,” An Operating System for the Mind.
He’s asking whether and why a common core of knowledge is necessary, and whether students ought to be tested on that core. Downes is thorough–copied into Word, the post comes to eight single-spaced pages. I wanted to read it and follow what he’s saying, which explains this post. If things aren’t clear here, blame me. Then, read Stephen’s original for yourself. The bottom line: while factual knowledge is helpful, certain key skills are essential; they are a kind of operating system for the mind, which can then work with data from the outside world.
What’s at the core? By “core knowledge,” he’s talking about a body or collection of things that provide the basics in a given field (e.g., you “need to know about bones to study medicine”). The question is, why these specific facts? It’s not just the facts, ma’am So what’s different? Facts: they don’t compute What the new operating system does. Learning Networks: Theory and Practice ~ Stephen's Web ~ by Stephen Downes. [All Presentations] Learning Networks: Theory and Practice March 8, 2005 Lecture presentation delivered to International Conference on Methods and Technologies for Learning, Palermo, Italy.
Talk at the opening of the International Conference on Methods and Technologies for Learning at the Palazzo dei Normanni, Palermo, Sicily. Unfortunately rushed, my talk wasn't everything I had hoped, though people were kind enough to say nice things afterward (including one who, after seeing the slides, said it's a talk I should give in full one day). Still, here are the slides and the MP3 of Learning Networks (3.3 megabytes). [Slides] [Audio] [Conference Link] New Technology Supporting Informal Learning. Abstract We often talk about games, simulations and other events in learning, but these technologies support only episodic learning.
Equally important are those technologies that provide a context for these learning episodes, an environment where students and interact and converse among themselves. This paper described experimentation in the development of distributed online courses and in software - particularly, the personal learning environment - that support the formation of connections between the far-flung pieces of such courses. This work, in turn, is suggesting and supporting the model of learning described in the first section, that of a course network supporting and informing an ever-shifting set of course episodes. This in turn suggests a pedagogy of participation rather than retention, and even suggests distributed and locally-based forms of evaluation and assessment.
Context Why is this necessary? Second, learners themselves are changing. Current Future.