“To combat the shrinking half-life of knowledge, organizations have been forced to develop new methods of deploying instruction.” I smile at the use of combat and force to describe changes that must be made in instruction because of there being more knowledge.
The 18 month half-life of knowledge has existed in the biological sciences for decades. The focus has needed to change, and instruction of the sciences has taken advantage of the new technological innovations, and we probably are much better at giving our students hands-on and electronic learning experiences now than we did a score and years ago. This transition is continual, gradual, adaptive, and appropriate.
In our class we are each taking making our transitional steps toward including technology in our repertoire. It becomes part of us when we “choose to use” it. We resist it when the combative ultimatum of force is upon us. We choose to take this course and we will all get a lot out of it. We will modify our instruction as we see best within the constrains of our energy, environment, and abilities. It will not come about because of the pace at which new information is being generated.
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If you agree that the "half-life of information" is shrinking, at what point does it become a real game changer for biological science instruction? As you mention, you have had to cope with teaching in a subject that is always revising and adding to the knowledge base, but is there a foreseeable point at which there is no escape from an adversarial attitude.
ReplyDeleteImagine a time in the near future when computers will be able to accurately model protein folding, eventually predictive ecology might even be possible. A student can put a sample of tissue into a machine that will identify it, display all known information about it, offer potential genetic customizations to it and analyze what the resultant organism might do to a particular ecosystem if released in to it. What happens to the role of an educator in this circumstance?