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This site contains presentations, publications, lessons and training materials developed over many years. The site is continually updated so I hope you'll come back often. All content is freely shareable and linkable, but I'd love to hear your comments about any of it. You can always find me at sine@udel.edu.

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March 30, 2008

How do we know?

A few weeks ago, I put in a proposal for our state conference called "How Do We Know?" My intent was to focus on how we glean truth from the information we find online. This is a burning issue for teachers as they plan research assignments in this age of Wikipedia.

As I gather my thoughts and my resources, I'm finding that the question is reforming around three new themes that really contribute to the way I find myself dealing with information as I do other parts of my job: overseeing a team whose duties include managing a network, developing for the web and supporting hundreds of laptop and desktop computers.

All of these require access to an ever changing ocean of information available through Google, endless access to unknown folks who offer support but lie along a continuum of expertise, and the varied skills of our team.

So, the real questions for "How Do We Know?" revolve around 3 questions for me.

  1. How do we know when the amount of digital information now exceeds 281 gigabytes?
  2. How do we know when we have to separate "truth" from outright false information and myriad shades of truth?
  3. How do we know what to know next when we can pursue seemingly infinite paths to knowing more about the areas of our careers?

I think these are the real 21st century challenges today. I suspect that for our students some will get much easier an some will get harder, but I don't think any of these will really go away. What do you think? I'm looking for comments here and on my presentation wiki.

Posted by Pat on March 30, 2008 9:07 PM

Comments

Pat,
Question #3 sums up my career! How do I know where to turn next? This applies to first grade and Wilm. Univ. What's the best practice for interventions? What research to guide instruction from? Which new path to lead tech students down? How many new tools do I need to know to successfully teach others about web 2.0 and the 21st century learner? How do I decide which are most beneficial? Great question.

Posted by: Norm on April 19, 2008 12:37 PM

And isn't that really the whole point of our product ..."lifelong learning"?

Good to hear from you!

Posted by: Pat Sine on May 1, 2008 1:18 PM

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