For my CEP 812 graduate class, we took at look at James Paul Gee's recently published book
The Anti-Education Era: Creating Smarter Students through Digital Learning. As a digital literacy educator, Gee takes a look deeper look at the effects of current mindsets involving digital and social media as well as how we are failing to use these technology tools to make us smarter problem solvers.
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| A student engaged in an authentic writing assignment. |
This assignment required the close and reflective reading of Part I: How to Be Stupid. With a title like that, who wouldn't want to know how to break that bad habit? Throughout the following chapters, Gee laid the ground work for the limitations humans are allowing themselves to become trapped by as well as offering thoughts of what can be done to break free of these limits.
Here is a pick into my reflection on Gee's book thus far. This Google Doc is a summary of Gee's theories as well as my ponderings on "What limitations prevent us from solving big, complex problems smartly?"
Courtney,
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed your response to Gee’s book. My response was around the same thought that formal schooling is limiting students as we are not teaching students how to problem solve but just become really good test takers. I really liked your thoughts on how problem-based learning is helping to change the ideas that formal schooling has driven us too. I think that you are right when you discuss that problem-based learning helps accomplish the five conditions for smart human action. It allows students to have experiences that formal schooling wasn’t/isn’t doing. I think the more critical thinking and real life problems we give students, we will create students who have actual skills not students who can take a test well.
Thank you for sharing,
Tiffany