We're talking knowledge here, not food, and let's define our terms before we bite off more than we can chew. In the educational sphere, a student is "regurgitating" knowledge when they summarize or quote someone else's work in their assignments. But when students take someone's knowledge and apply it to something in their own life, or combine it with someone else's knowledge to bring new meaning to it, we call this "construction" of knowledge.
Typical blog posts are full of regurgitation examples, with some construction examples. Quotes from the web, books, or readers often find their way to blog posts, and serve to highlight good ideas. These are lower-order thinking skills. But when a blogger takes someone's knowledge, and reflects on it to create new meaning, he reaches the higher-order thinking skills.
Obviously our goal as teachers is to lead our students to higher-order thinking skills...at some point. But does that mean they should never be posting on the lower-level? This may leave us to question the value of repeated knowledge - is it valuable to simply quote other's work without reflecting on the message?
Now it's your turn to answer - What's the right balance between lower and higher order thinking in writing (and blogging)?
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Love your tone in the writing, it really pulls me in. As far as the balance, I think you can't really move to higher order thinking until you have a base of knowledge, so the answer is if you're talking with those who already have that base, then climb, if you're unsure, then give a bit of a base to give context
ReplyDeleteLinda - Do you think a blog post or another writing assignment where students are repeating knowledge (instead of reflecting on knowledge) is a good way for students to build that base knowledge, or do they need to acquire the base knowledge in another way before they begin writing about it?
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