Google, Wikipedia, & John Dewey

This week's reading for our Ed. Tech class focused on an article discussing the uses of Google and Wikipedia as well as some information on John Dewey and his Pedagogic Creed.

My first response to the Google and Wikipedia article was a "well duh it can be useful if we're careful" knee jerk. Perhaps because I've personally come across the pit falls and errors within the search engine and content source, or perhaps because I've had professors who taught us effective uses of the two. At any rate, once I finished reading I had to sit back and think about my usage of these two internet phenomena.

It was very difficult to remember a time when Google and Wikipedia were not part of my everyday world. I don't remember the first time that I "googled" something; or even when I first heard of it. The wikipedia page that I found on the origins of Google indicate that it was first taking off when I was in middle school, so it's entirely possible, and probable, that I covered it in my 7th or 8th grade computers class. I certainly didn't use it for my research papers, I remember lengthy class periods spent dissecting the media center's layout and internal databases we could use to uncover books within the shelves. At no point were electronic resources discussed. Not until high school anyway, and there they were tentatively allowed.

Then there's Wikipedia, I use it all the time. I'll even browse through Wikipedia in my spare time, following link after link until five or six hours have gone by and I only become aware of the fact from the movement of the sun; if I happen to be outside or by a window. I walk away from these sessions with snippets of facts; Lauren Bacall's real name was Betty, Quad Cities is actually a grouping of five cities in the IA-IL border (Quint didn't catch on), things that are in essence trivia that might one day answer a crossword puzzle question, maybe. While I feel that perhaps I'm spending my time more wisely than a steady diet of trash TV, it doesn't accomplish much.

True, I've used Google and Wikipedia to give me foundations in my research topics from the Nazi regime's treatment of education (this search uncovered a wealth of translated textbooks available online through Calvin University) to interpretations of Dracula through the 20th century. I am a big supporter of using Google and Wikipedia as resources to alert students to possible topics for further study, though I caution against using solely Wikipedia or just the top five results from Google.

Like any new technological advancement, Google and Wikipedia have their uses. As teachers it is very important for us to be aware of their benefits and drawbacks so that we can treat their usage evenhanded and demonstrate for our students the ways in which they are best utilized.

As for John Dewey, he had me up until "I believe that in this way the teacher always is the prophet of the true God and the usherer in of the true kingdom of God." That's about when he lost me. I'm all for religious tolerance, and this last line implied to me that he wasn't. It's a part of his creed that I foresee myself pushing to the farthest corner of my long term memory to not think about it much.

That being said, I found myself drawn to his comments on learning as an inherent trait of humanity. Children learn through observation; language for example. Language is something that is picked up from those people speaking around the child, cause and effect are learned in much the same way. It does not logically follow that a child will be capable of immediate immersion into a traditional learning atmosphere, where rote memorization is key. While that style of teaching has its uses, in the lower grade levels in particular learning by experimentation and exploration is very important.

I feel that Dewey agreed with my impression that the best learning environments are ones that incorporate traditional schooling techniques with a progressive leaning towards individual child learning.

As we discussed in our foundations class today, while I am drawing my own conclusions about what type of educational philosophy I most adhere to, no single educational philosophy is completely accurate. Not all children will benefit from a traditional, progressive, existential, or post-modern method of teaching. The importance is in the blending. I feel that John Dewey understood that, and his creed indicates this at several points.

Battery is about to die here folks.
More on life later,
~Ren