I'm Full of It

"Teaching should be full of ideas instead of stuffed with facts."

-Unknown

I remember having to memorize all sorts of things in school. At one point, I could recite the first 30-some elements of the periodic table, all of the state capitals, the presidents in order, and the states in alphabetical order. I can still do the state thing, which blows my wife away because they did not sing that particular song at her Catholic elementary school. My kids probably can't do any of those things, but I see them doing things that I couldn't have even begun to attempt at their age. The age of information is transforming our relationship with information, with facts. There was a time when memorizing the periodic table may have been helpful because it saved you the time of pulling out a book to find it. The investment of time to memorize it presented a positive return in the time you would save constantly having to find it. Now that we are all carrying the sum total of the collective knowledge of mankind in our pocket, there is no longer a reasonable return on that investment. Why spend hours memorizing "Hydrogen, Helium, Lithium, Beryllium, Boron, Carbon..." (That was all from memory, btw. I can still get through the first dozen or so), when I can just pull out my phone and have the entire periodic table and all of the information contained in it within seconds? I can even just ask it simple questions, and it will give me an answer. Go ahead. Pull out your phone and ask it which is the most common of the noble gas occuring on Earth. 

So what is the point? Is education now irrelevant because we have smartphones? No. Holy cow, that couldn't be further from the truth. In fact, education may be more important than ever. With such easy access to information, our focus needs to shift away from memorization of facts and onto how to process the unlimited amount of information to which our students now have access. They will be consumers of this digital world; it is up to us to make sure they are savvy consumers. Aside from that, we have an opportunity that generations of educators before us did not have. Instead of having student memorize the dates of certain historical events, we can dig deeper into the causes and ramifications. We can ask them to imagine the present if the past had turned out differently. Who cares if they know the date the Gettysburg Address was signed? I don't remember it, and I've turned out pretty okay. If I ever need to know that exact date, my phone can... Yep, it just told me. Instead, we can have students reach a deeper understanding that a number on a calendar because they can get that number at any point in time if they should happen to need.

I urge you as educators to look beyond the facts and explore ideas. Be fearless in your efforts to build lifelong skills in your students and allow them to explore and create because that is when real, meaningful learning happens.

A prize will be awarded to the first SMS staff member to bring me the missing item from this picture (color does not need to match):