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Stephen Downes

Knowledge, Learning, Community

We can make the point here by overstating it: if something matters to us, we remember it, and if it doesn't, we don't. Sure, that's an exaggeration, but let it pass. Now consider: "neither slates nor books nor computers have reactions to anything, though, so will never experience the world. Slates, books and computers will store the same content in the same way, but two people sitting in a classroom will react differently to what they experience and store different things as a result. Either way, there is no content." The upshot? "We got confused several hundred years ago – we started assuming that people function like blank slates, or books, or computers and that you could transfer information into them in symbolic form, storing 'content'." And this is where learning theory begins.

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Stephen Downes Stephen Downes, Casselman, Canada
stephen@downes.ca

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Last Updated: Nov 22, 2024 05:00 a.m.

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