Learning Science in the Digital Age

2009-10-08T08:13:00.000-07:00

Virtually everything known about science is at our fingertips today ... 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It's all there on the Web--science at its best and its worst, in its most sublime and mediocre forms. What's more, the monetary cost of accessing that information approaches zero. Learners (a.k.a. students) are no longer at the mercy of institutionalized science education and textbook publishers and the crunch of dept that they incur.

This is not to say that colorful, well-written textbooks are a thing of the past. Or that there is no longer any need for a classroom, an expert mentor or teacher, and a scheme for validating the quality of learning. This traditional form of education will have "its place" in the overall scheme of learning and science progress, but it has already become just one option among several. It is no longer the sole standard for learning.

For those who are dedicated to organizing information into quantifiable bits and bites of knowledge and finding ways to convey that information most conveniently to an endless parade of pass-through students, knowledge on the Web is a horrible mess. It seems there is simply too much information that is poorly and largely unsubstantiated. It is a free-for-all of information and misinformation. Well ... welcome to the Digital Age. And enter: the knowledge journeymen.

Yes, the Web is a compacted mass of information of staggering proportions. And, yes, a good percentage of it is of questionable value and, indeed, outright misleading and immoral. But it is firtile soil for real learning. As Kant suggested over two centuries ago, we should be preparing our people to learn, and not simply "train" them as we do puppies and ponies. From that perspective, the Web actually becomes a source of opportunity ... one of staggering proportions.

The realities of science are not clearly conveyed in our traditional elementary science courses (whether in primary school or college). Science is portrayed as a tidy, ticky-tacky patchwork of principles and procedures. It is all is all so clean and clear, sanitized, and well organized. Of course there are a couple of unsighly smudges here and there, but they are a puzzles left for those special eggheads who can understand such things. Those who have to pass science exams can't afford to spend time thinking about something that can't be on the next multiple-choice question.

Now shift to the Web -- that massive mess of unrelated information. Those who really know about science can see some parallels here. Science is not tidy. It is not squeaky clean. There are no clear paths to the future, simply awaiting the right genius and lab toy. Science is a mess. Always has been. It is the nature of the beast. It only looks tidy and sensible after the fact--after the ideas are logically organized, after the theory is proven, and after historians organize the process.

I suggest here that if we teach our would-be scientists how to deal with the Web, we will also be teaching them how to do science. You don't know where you are going when you start. You don't know where you will end up. Not really. Not if you are a master of Web-ology and science. All you know for certain is where you want to start ... maybe.

Wringing information out of the Web and doing real science are parallel processes. There are no sterile, bite-size pieces of information organized into a meaningful curriculum. Rather, you come up with a question, devise a plan for working with it, and go to work. What is right? What is wrong? So much ambiguity! Worse yet, there are endless opportunities for getting sidetracked with other attractive ideas.

There are some disciplines required for doing science and gleaning knowledge from the Web. Teaching these disciplines in the context of searching the Web for meaningful knowledge certainly prepares one for making a meaningful contribution to science.

Free-Ed.Net, a leading source of free education on the Web, is pioneering the notion that, given the information available on the Web, "ordinary" people can make serious contributions to science -- and I mean science, not technology. This assertion is based upon the premise that learning science the hard way (on the Web and starting with nothing more than a topic outline) prepares a learner for doing real science. It isn't all about what you know or how smart you are. And it certainly isn't about good grades and respectable credentials. Rather, it's about the necessary character traits and productive worldviews.

Doing Real Science

Learning Science in the Digital Age