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All right welcome to ANI in the air under the tent talk about Tuesday where I
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talk about something related to the school. So today's I mean this week's
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theme is sort of Wikipedia and YouTube and all that information out there so I
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thought it would be relevant to talk about the age-old question of how do
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they know what they don't know. Well how can they learn what they want to learn
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and then how do they know what they want to learn and all that kind of mess of
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questioning. Well so first of all there is a lot of information out there for
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those who are looking. Google searches will yield lots of results or I
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prefer DuckDuckGo. You know there's Wikipedia articles on everything.
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Wikipedia has of course resources linked in the article so you can go check those
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things out. Wikipedia does not have sort of an attitude of deducing what's going
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on really trying to just reflect what's in some articles which can be of course
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biased towards various things. So you know there's that and of course there's
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YouTube basically as far as I can tell when people want to learn how to do
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something or other or whatever they go to YouTube and they watch a video and
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they figure it out. I think for me the main thing that I learned this was over
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a decade ago was how to make kimchi. Oh I make a good kimchi. So good that you know
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some you know Koreans I know have tried my kimchi and they're like oh that's good
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kimchi. So yeah but all that came from a YouTube video of well a Korean woman
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making kimchi. So there you go. So yeah if you know what you're looking for
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there's a lot out there. It's harder to say what stuff were you know is
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valid is good but you know there's something to be said about the
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skepticism of that of knowing that what you're reading may not actually be true.
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One of the things in conventional school is that you're just supposed to believe
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what the teacher and the textbook say. Now in a field of mind such as
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mathematics and somewhat physics as well a lot of this stuff can be actually you
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know reasoned about figured out experimented with and so you don't
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really need to believe too much and obviously the other fields to some
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extent have this or not but you know there's a there's a lot of stuff that's
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just kind of so just take on faith that what these experts are telling you is
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true and so and they make you regurgitated as well so you know that
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healthy skepticism that one should really have gets lost whereas when
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you're searching the internet hopefully you do have that skepticism. I haven't
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really done a survey of Sudbury-esque graduates and so forth versus
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conventional school graduates in terms of how much do they believe the stuff
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they see. Sudbury schools are still relatively small number so it would be a
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harder sample to justify conclusions from unfortunately but perhaps in the
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future but I certainly hope that there is a healthy skepticism that's developed
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by having to figure out on your own and look at all these resources. Now the
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harder question is how do they know what to look for. This is a very difficult
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question because well how do they know and part of it is of course well
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generally speaking it's you need to have a reason to go and search stuff so a lot
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of the stuff that happens something will happen and be like well how does that
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work or how do I do that or whatever and so then you know know to look. This works
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for quite a number of things you know people mentioning some various
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historical or literary references boom it's you know just seeing how everyday
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items work boom you got all that but there's a whole category of stuff of
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like tools that if you don't know they exist then you might not look for them
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maybe ask how somebody figured this or that out and you get the answer so you
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know you know for example mathematics which is taught in conventional school
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and which nobody almost nobody well not nobody but a small percentage look back
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a couple weeks you know you know they use it right they don't they don't know
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know to use it they don't know the actual power of it because it's taught
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poorly again go listen to some podcast a couple weeks ago about yeah my math
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diatribe but yeah so it's it is about learning these things and I guess this
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is one of the things that we rely on you know people sharing their experiences
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the you know the goal here is is a sharing it's a community of sharing that
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knowledge and figuring out all that stuff and so you know I'm a
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mathematician so I'm sure my daughter has witnessed some of of my thinking
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mathematically and and over time you know she might come on to that and then
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sort of use it and share it here and you know of course I share it here and and
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you know it's just that kind of in the ether kind of knowledge it's it's it's
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really trusting that you bump into enough stuff that the things that are
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going to really impact you will in fact happen to you it's not a guarantee
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certainly the big topics that are taught in schools are easy to bump into so
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almost everyone will you know that they may not have the lingo or whatever but
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they they they see it and I am not impressed with a lot of adults level of
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knowledge of the things I saw in conventional school anyway and you know
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think about the knowledge that you've learned in the past that you have no use
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for do you still have that in your mind you know it's kind of gone the brain was
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like I don't need this and then it goes away so I'm not convinced that there's
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really much in the way one can really do about you know exposing students to
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stuff they don't know and having something useful come from it it's just
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having some fun and seeing what happens and you know eventually things get
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figured out and caught on and and so forth so that is pretty much my thought
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so in summary if someone knows to look for something boom lots of stuff out
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there lots and lots of stuff if you don't know what to look for well it's
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probably gonna randomly come across your path at some point but if not people can
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tell you right and if someone's feeling like they're missing out on conventional
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school just look up the curriculum and say okay what do I know about this or
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what are these things and see what happens but you know our kids students
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when they graduate they seem to have a wide breadth of knowledge I think much
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wider than conventional school because they are exposed to everything figuring
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it all out they're really constructing a whole world of their own and that
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involves a lot of work and effort and so that's you know that's what I got so oh
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also one last thing um you can do things like there's a hacker site called Hacker
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News which allows for browsing of various topics that come up there's a
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Wikipedia has a home page that shows you various topics there's a lot of random
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algorithms and various things and Twitter and Instagram like like even
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though there are a lot of downsides to many of these things there there is the
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that upside that you will run into all this random stuff from you know internet
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stuff so you know less so for younger students but as students get older and
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getting closer to the adult world you know they they can start acquiring more
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of that that stuff and when they read something and it doesn't make sense then
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that's an opportunity to get something more or watch something and something
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doesn't make sense to investigate it further until it's it's known enough
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satisfied so that's my thought thanks for listening I will see you when I see
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you