Seth Godin's recent post on the Wikipedia gap was quite interesting. And it got me thinking.
In the real world, there are few, if any, times when a person has to do something completely from memory. If someone wants to know the date the Treaty of Versailles was signed, they will simply Google it, not try to recall it from the days of 10th grade Western Civ. I am not saying that learning how to commit things to memory is not important either.
I think Seth is right on when he says:
Here's what just about every exam ought to be: "Use Firefox to find the information you need to answer this question:" And as the internet gets smarter, the questions are going to have to get harder. Which is a good thing. Until teachers get unstuck, our kids are going to be stuck and so will we.
America's schools should be focused on empowering students to find information on the Web, not memorize soon forgotten facts from a history textbook. Function over form people.
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