George Siemens observes that we are in the age of external knowledge, pointing to a New York Times article of the same name, which in turn points to Edge asking how is the Internet changing the way we think.
This of course is food for much philosophizing.
Do I need to “know” which country is directly east of Hungary if I can Google it?
(It’s Romania.)
Do I “know” how to fix anything in my house if I know I can Google how?
This topic — do I need to know something in my head or just how to find it — feels new but isn’t.
(Ask anyone who taught math in the 1970s when calculators came out.)
But of course the Internet — and device ubiquity — turbocharges the issue.
The biggest implication for trainers is probably seeming lame to modern learners:
“I can find it when I need it, so why are you trying to put knowledge in my head now?”
Age of External Knowledge | 19 January 2010
(TW)
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Being able to find ‘it’ and being able to do ‘it’ well are too very different things. Yes, I can find out where Romania is and this probably isn’t something I need to be ‘trained’ on. But while I might be able to find the steps necessary to try to change a light fixture, or a cold calling sales cycle to emulate, it takes lots of practice to get good at these more complex actions. I think the role of the trainer goes back to demonstrating the desired skill, then- most importantly providing lots of feedback to the learner so that they can build their level of competence.
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That’s probably where things are headed: that training is only needed on complex skills that require practice and feedback to learn. For everything else, learning is expected to happen as needed through the sea of information at your fingertips. I wonder if the training profession is ready to adopt that…
George Siemens point is that the NY times heading was misleading. Knowledge cannot be externalized. It’s information out there. “Knowledge is essentially relatedness/connectedness”. I think that modern learners reluctance / inability to transform information into knowledge is because they cannot see the connections. This is where the trainer steps in. Their job is to assist the learner see those connections.
Derek, I agree that that is what George Siemens is saying. But I think the knowledge-versus-information distinction might be big to a theoretician but is just a matter of semantics to the user/learner. If you ask me if I know how to get somewhere, depending on my own definition of “know”, I can either say, “Yes, I know how to get there because I have a GPS,” or “No, I don’t know how to get there but I have a GPS.” Either way, I can get there independently thanks to the GPS.
I think going forward the familiar notion that the trainer’s job is to help the poor learner cope with difficult-to-learn information (“information is not instruction,” “teaching ain’t telling”) is going to make less and less sense.
I think the trainer’s job is going to become (a) making sure that there really is information to connect to, and (b) helping people learn difficult skills (e.g., it would be tough for me to learn Russian independently).