Remember when the ringtone was the coolest feature on your phone? Remember when T9 was considered artificial intelligence? Perhaps I’m aging myself a little. The smartphone has come a long way. Thank you Captain Obvious.
Being connected has not only had a major impact on how we communicate digitally but face to face as well. “I don’t know” has been replaced with “one minute I’ll check”. In my group of friends if ever we land on a topic that we don’t know one of us will eventually say “If only we had a device that could tell us the answer” and we will all shake our heads in shame. Also, given our seemingly unlimited access to almost any piece of information, we’ve made it so much easier to call Bullshit and prove it! Gone are the know-it-alls because we are all know-it-alls now. Sorry Cliff Claven, you’re wrong!
The mobility of our smartphones combined with access to the internet means that our physical minds are becoming integrated with our digital selves. Our intelligence is augmented with access to unlimited knowledge while our memory can now be augmented with the use of local and cloud storage like Google Drive, Dropbox, and iCloud to name a few. Have we embarked on the predicted Kurzweilian journey? Is this infiltration the first wave of the Borg’s plan? Are we cyborgs already? Just a little? Is it a good thing? I think so. But I digress.
What I wanted to get at was that in the age of unlimited access to information should we be asking students to memorize dates and formulas and names or should we focus on insights of history, how to learn and adapt, how materials work with each other, outcomes and how to form solutions? It seems to me we will need an insight aggregator for almost every subject with a focus on how to think as opposed to what to think. I’m excited to learn more and participate in our evolving educational strategy especially given the upcoming birth of our daughter. If resistance is futile then leverage will be key.
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This post was previously published on Medium.
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The post Are We Cyborgs Already? Should We Change Our Education Strategy? appeared first on The Good Men Project.