Source: www.configure.it
Did you know that 90% of the world’s information was generated over the last two years? Well, I didn’t until I read this article! So, my question is … how are we preparing our students based on this information? How are we preparing our teachers? Administrators?
In addition, how can we keep up? Or do we need to keep up? These are all questions I pondered after reading this article and preparing for this blog. Here is my feeble attempt to respond.
Impact on student learning
- I think the first step in understanding this “Big Data” is awareness. I will certainly be sharing this information with teachers and encouraging them to share it with their students (and hopefully parents).
- Have teachers and students make their own connections to this “Big Data.” For instance, engaging kids in an activity designed to help them not only understand the magnitude of data, but also how they might contribute to furthering the data. Let them explore data, and see what connections they can make.
The Experts
- We have been saying f0r a long time that teachers are not the experts in the classroom anymore. If this article’s conclusion doesn’t enlighten the strong holds “sage on the stage” or the “know it all” then I am not sure what will!
- Granted, with such “Big Data” there will always be experts, but what does the expert in the future look like? What will they know? For the classroom, I see this as the access to information. Designing lessons where kids can become the expert in something will require the participant to understand how much information they accessed to become an expert…..
The Future
- If we are producing more and more information that adds to the “Big Data” (this blog adds a sliver to the overall) we can only expect that it will grow faster and become bigger. There are those who analyze these trends and forecast what things will be like… All I can say is…. Good Luck! As we produce more and more information, we can only have theories on the impact on the future.
What do you think of “Big Data”?