Who knows what they're learning?

This week's prompt is, "How can teachers and schools ensure that their students are learning what they need when it comes to Technology and Information Literacy?"

There is a fascinating shift that has occurred in the realm of education. There was a time, and not that long ago, when the specific skills one needed for a career (not attitudes or mindsets, but things like how to use a slide rule and when to use a certain formula) were likely to remain unchanged (or change only slowly) throughout one's professional life. Under this system, it made sense to have teachers teach what and how they were taught, including at the high school level.

But competence in your field is no longer assured by having been up-to-date and competent when one graduated 10 or 15 years ago. Certainly, much basic content will be the same, but even the basics of what content should be learned has changed. While a major area of study for biology at the high school level once involved memorization of long lists of taxonomic classification, this has been much reduced and simplified to exemplify the range of diversity of life. The details are now so easily accessible, so simple to look up, that their memorization is a waste of time that could be spent learning more involved theories and concepts. This does not even cover the changes in methods and techniques in research. Much that was unthinkable a generation ago, especially in terms of DNA technology, is now within the grasp of a graduate student. Such sea-changes are to be found in other fields as well.

These changes now happen many times within a single educators career, and it seems unlikely that (if civilization survives its unprecedented pace) that changes will happen any slower for quite some time. So, what can we do to make sure that are students are learning what they need to know, especially in the field of IT?

The answer is simply that, alone, we cannot. The only way to stay current post- information revolution, is to be in constant contact and collaboration with a wide array of colleagues and "experts" in various education, subject-specific, and IT niches. There is simply too much to know and it changes too fast to go it alone as an educator.

Below, I include this video of a flock of starlings because it makes me think of some of these ideas. Alone, these birds could not conceive these shapes and patterns even though each is a part of it. Their sensitivity and response to each other does not seem limiting so much as creative and liberating.