We've finished! Sort of...

Well, that lesson finished us off for Knowers and Knowing.  Now we get to explore the WoK!  Ways of Knowing here we come.  Just as a little reminder, our ways of knowing are:

1. Language
2. Sense Perception
3. Reason (Rationality)
4. Emotion

In next Thursday's lesson, we will look at the strengths and weaknesses of each of these ways of knowing and then dive right in to language!  So your homework for next Thursday's blog is the following:

Put these statements in rank order of importance and justify your ranking.

1) We cannot carry every object about which we need to communicate.
2) We need to be able to communicate about actions without actually doing them.

3) Abstract ideas which can only be expressed in language are an essential part of human experience.

4) We need to be able to communicate about emotions beyond their mere expression.

Can you think of any other reasons we need language?  Write your other reasons below your justification.

TTFN

What we still don't know

As I said in class today, I watched the most relevant programme this weekend to what we have been studying recently.  The 'Are We Real' episode will also be a great preparation for the ToK seminar we're going to in November.  Below are links to both the accompanying website and the episode itself.  The previous episodes are just as great, but the one I have linked specifically to is perfect in following up on our continuing discussions of the nature of knowledge and whether or not we exist.  Happy viewing!

http://www.channel4.com/science/microsites/W/what_we_still_dont_know/arewereal.html

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8018371269760059556

PS - Isn't Martin Rees creepy?

ToK Blog Homework 8/10/09

In class today, I hope you came to some conclusion about our knowledge communities and their inherent limitations.  I think its important that we finished with Sir Ken's words, as his idea of what education needs to be - I write needs instead of ought because there is an urgency to his TED speech that I hope was not lost on any of us this morning -  is exactly what I think we're trying to do in ToK.  I am, in a way, a victim of the very education inflation that Sir Ken referred to and I'd hate to see any of you in the room go down that same road of disappointment and resentment that further education will inevitably lead to if we don't start to think differently. 

In my freshman year at Shippensburg University in Pennsylvania, I had the real pleasure of going to an evening lecture with James Burke, science historian and tv presenter, in which he warned against a tendency towards specialisms, in which every student becomes more pigeon-holed into a specific category of study - never seeing the forest, for the trees.  He saw this as dangerous and I tend to agree - no doubt because I watched his Connections series as a child and was influenced by his thesis that everything, all knowledge, is interlinked and that true innovation and creativity is come to by those who are aware of these links and take advantage of them.

And so that brings me back to the idea of education from your blogs last week and its institutions that we consider to be perhaps the most influential when it comes to where we get our knowledge.  Your new Blog task is to read over the following questions about knowledge communities and reflect on them in your blogs.  Remember, next week is the 2nd marking of your Blog entries, so let's keep up with them. 

• Do knowledge claims transcend different communities or cultures?
• What differences exist between public and private justifications?
• To what extent might this distinction between private knowledge and public knowledge be culturally dependent?
• Does making a knowledge claim carry any particular obligation or responsibility for the knower?

 PS - some of us haven't linked our blogs to this site - so some of us do not have a mark yet for the last blog mark up.  Get linking guys!!!

TOK Blog homework

For your homework this week:  Write a journal entry based upon the following tasks.

• SCHOOL! What in your opinion is the difference between ‘education’ & ‘indoctrination?’
• Do schools encourage you to question things and think for yourselves?
• Find examples of where school wants you to conform.
• Do you expect your teachers to ‘know’ everything there is to know? Why?

PS - the link to the TED video we were supposed to watch in class is below - look for contributing to knowledge.

Scrambling for time as we explored knowledge!

Well, I have to say that was perhaps the most exhausting lesson I've taught all week. I'm happy with most of the conclusions we came to in the lesson and I've posted a pic of our work below. Let's try in our next lesson to keep the random shouting to a minimum, remember - this is a workshop of sorts and we can only collaborate on our ideas if we listen to what everyone has to say. The thinking stick will make it's way into our next lesson in two weeks time.

Remember to also get those blogs going - Deadline for your first two entries is next Thursday and I will be checking.

We didn't get on to our next topic in lesson 2, which was to look at whether knowledge is certain. Let's plan on that being how we start the lesson on October 1st.

I am excited to see what you all come up with in our Wikipedia exercise - we're contributing to knowledge, which I think is in itself a great way to approach the idea of knowledge. Which means you should be questioning what role information plays in knowledge and perhaps how that role might have changed with the advent of the Internet.

And now I'm going to go for a nap!

TTFN

Brilliant ToK!

Well that was perhaps the best lesson I have had the privelege to be a part of in a very long time. I'm so glad that already I don't have to worry about getting you all to come out of your shells...some of you were throwing those shells across the room like grenades!

So, at the end of our discussion on how you might map knowledge, I hope a little question might have started swimming to the top of your consciousness. We know now how we'd each represent knowledge visually - kudos to Jensen's group for thinking outside the box and modelling how you come to know - but what is knowledge?

For our next lesson I want you to burst into the classroom with the intense need to explain to everyone that you have come up with the ultimate definition for knowledge. Take a look at Plato's definition of knowledge...do you agree?

In our next lesson we are going to examine some of those loose ends we left at the end of the last lesson. In order to do this, we need to investigate the nature of knowing. By the end of period two, I want to examine another question - Is knowledge certain? Your homework will help you in coming to some conclusions on this question...but remember - there are some aspects of knowledge where we may find there is no certainty. Where would be the fun in knowing that everything in life was certain anyway!

Hope you had fun in class today...I really did :-)

TTFN

Every thing I need to know I learned from Animaniacs

In preparation for our lovely ToK lessons this September, I began thinking about all the things I learned as a child; the real foundation of the knowledge I carry today. It brought to mind that wonderful poem by Robert Fulghum 'All I really need to know I learned in Kindergarten'. From there, I began to ponder on what I learned in Kindergarten -

1. Don't daydream when you're taking a test because you'll get behind everyone else and won't be able to catch up - even though a daydream is so much better than taking a test.
2. Caterpillars, which are green and kind of ugly like worms, turn into butterflies, which are pretty and can fly.
3. Kids who eat glue are weird. Kids who put glue on their hands, let it dry, and then peel it off like dead skin are tactile.

Weirdly enough, I also began to hear in my head 'Wheel of Morality, turn turn turn, tell us the lesson we should learn...'. Although I didn't watch the Animaniacs until much later in my childhood, I believe quite a bit of sound knowledge can be gained by the Warner Brothers and their Warner Sister Dot.


So here I present you with the beginning of our quest for knowledge - A compilation of all the wheel of moralities brought to your by those lovely Warners.


Happy viewing...see you in September.