"From Knowledgable to Knowledge-able: Learning in New Media Environments"
Michael Wesch
Quotes:
1) "It becomes less important for student to know, memorize, or recall information, and more important for them to be able to find, sort, analyze, share, discuss, critique, and create information. They need to move from being simply knowledgable to knowledge-able." This quote from the opening of Wesch's piece gets to the heart of what this article is about. As a result of the New Media Environment, the old way of understanding education becomes less important. As he says, "it becomes less important for students to know, memorize, or recall information." He says over and over again that it isn't about spitting back the information, but it is about being able to ask the right questions. On page 11, Wesch gets to this best case scenario, "In the best case scenario the students will leave the course, not with answers, but with more questions, and even more importantly, the capacity to ask still more questions generated from their continual pursuit and practice of the subjectivities we hoe to inspire." It seems that this New Media Environment and the educational reforms the Wesch talk about are closely related to the socratic method of teaching - teaching students to learn by asking questions. How remarkable that this time test method of teaching can be combined with the New Media Environment to produce a completely new standard of education and learning. A way that takes information as something hard to find and turns it into something to be created.
2) "Always aware of the hidden metaphors underlying our most basic assumptions, they suggest calling this "the Vaccination Theory of Education" as students are led to believe that once they have "had" a subject they are immune to it and need not take it again." Here Wesch suggesting that to achieve this Knowledge-able state, we must completely change the way we talk about schooling. The moment I read the above quote, I thought of all the times that I have used that exact same phrase. Think back to all the classes and subjects you've taken. Can you remember the information you gathered in that class and the questions it led you to ask? I know I can't. I think that has something to do with this way we understand courses, but also the larger picture of this article. Most of my classes have been about memorizing and spiting back information. This at times has been literal, where I've had to memorize Constitutional Amendments and copy them on an exam. A week after the exam I couldn't tell you what it said. The problem with memorizing spitting back information is that students generally forget it once the exam is over. They no longer need that information they have "had" the class. There is even an assumption on the part of professors in the rest of the department that once you have "had" a class you don't need to go over that information any more. "You should remember this from 202 so we won't go over it now." When this is said by the professor in my Political Science classes my peers and I look at each other shrug and then go look it up on Google. Wesch is really on to something here. Looking at a subject once and never returning it means that students are fully developing the critical thinking skills that he talks about as the core skills of this New Media Environment.
3) "love and respect your students and they will love and respect you back. With the underlying feeling of trust and respect this provides, students quickly realize the importance of their role as co-creators of the learning environment and they being to take responsibility for their own education." It is my firm belief, and supported here by Wesch, that without trust and respect students cannot and will not learn in class. A great example of this - not fitting with what Wesch describes - standard lecture classes. The professor stands in front of the class and lectures for an hour and a half - from the start to the end of the class - and assigns the next assignment and leaves. Half time, students don't even show up to these classes, but there is not connection. This, in my opinion, show a lack of respect for the students on the part of the professor and in turn the students do not show respect back to the professor. In classes where students have to take responsibility for their education, they are more invested in it and more likely to actually show up. My partner shares stories all the time from her time at Providence College as a Public Service major. This program at PC is defined by the quote above. The most important thing for freshman and new classes to establish is a sense of community within their program. At the begin of each semester the professors and students define their class norms and assumptions. They work together to define the agenda for the class, and students are encouraged to share articles they find on their own with the class. It is not about memorizing information, but it is about forming community built on love and respect and asking questions while seeking information in the world around them. Much like Wesch recreates the world in this classroom. Public Service majors recreate the community in their classrooms, address issues, create programs, ask questions. They then go out into the world and attempt to put what they have learned and created together into practice. If it doesn't they come back to the classroom with a new set of questions and problems and start the process over again. They are taught to constantly question things. Two years after graduation, my partner still remembers almost everything she learned as a Public Service major. I, on the other hand, in a more "traditional major" that is pretty much based on lectures and memorization can't remember things that I learned in classes last semester. With out love, respect, and investment in one's education there cannot be a true form of learning. If students get to the Knowledgable stage, it certainly prevents them from getting to the Knowledge-able stage.
