What happens when common knowledge is built on misconception?
August 11th, 2007 by DianeThis is a question that has been tumbling through my mind recently. I’ve spent this past week as a guest of the Canadian Space Agency, touring the Kennedy Space Center, and watching the launch of the Space Shuttle Endeavor. That means I have spent my time in the company of people who, at the very least, have a profound interest in space exploration.
I had the opportunity to listen to some snippets of conversations that were occurring all around me that presented misconceptions as fact. I was surprised in this environment for instance, to hear people talking about the “zero gravity” environment of the Shuttle and the Space Station. This is a very commonly-held misconception, certainly among the students in our ISS07 project. The reality is that there is lots of gravity, about 90% as much as on Earth. In fact, it is the Earth’s gravity that keeps spacecraft (and the Moon) in their orbits around the Earth. Therefore a better, and more precise way to describe this environment is to call it a “free-fall” environment. In orbit a spacecraft is actually falling (accelerating) directly towards the centre of the Earth. (The astronauts inside are falling at the same rate and therefore float). It is only as a result of the spacecraft’s enormous horizontal (tangential) speed that it is able to maintain a more-or-less constant distance from the Earth’s surface.
So what does this example mean for educators? I’ve been listening to or taking part in conversations with many edubloggers over the past year about the need to give our students the tools and experiences required to develop the skills to build personal learning networks. I’m getting the uneasy feeling that at least some of us are assuming that authority will reside in the network. As my gravity example shows, the group, or by extension the network, can be wrong. What then?
Where do we go for authoritative information? I’ve noticed a trend in responses students have been posting to challenge questions in both of our Polar Science projects and now our ISS07 project; students start with Wikipedia. I’m not saying that this is necessarily a bad thing, especially as a starting point. But should students stop with one information source?
In a recent post on his Connectivism blog, George Siemens states that the popularity of Wikipedia is due not so much because it is an authoritative resource, but more because it’s good enough and easy enough to find what he calls “quick and dirty” knowledge, such as “How is beer made?” Siemens states:
Wikipedia provides “gap filling” information, not necessarily foundation information on which we base world views. For foundational world view information, we don’t rely on a singular resource. We blend many - experts, our own experiences, our own thinking, influences of colleagues, articles, books, and so on.
David Warlick in today’s post talks about plans to add a comment feature to Google News and the implications this will have for authoritative journalism. Warlick asks:
So, where’s Walter Cronkite when you need him?
This takes me back to the question I asked a couple of paragraphs ago, where do we go for authoritative information? If there ever was, there certainly is no longer, a comfort zone, a respected authority under the watchful eyes of authors, editors, journalists, experts. The answer lies in what Warlick calls new literacy habits:
The only comfort — our ONLY safety — is in people who are critical thinkers, skilled information workers, who ask questions about the answers that they find — by habit.
Develop that habit in the context of what Siemens calls “blending” many information sources, and then I think we can have confidence in the authority of personal learning networks.
Warlick says:
That puts the ball in our court, teachers.
Amen! And what an incredible responsibility and exciting challenge!
Technorati tags: Canadian Space Agency Kennedy Space Center Space Shuttle Endeavor gravity misconceptions edubloggers Wikipedia Polar Science ISS07 George Siemens David Warlick Google News
Image Citation
NASA. “Clay Anderson Waves to the Camera.” 23 July 2007. 11 Aug 2007 <http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/multimedia/exp15_anderson_eva_516.html>.