A Seismic Shift in Epistemology

John Buschman sent a link out this morning to this article by Chris Dede in the current EDUCAUSE Review, “A Seismic Shift in Epistemology. The article examines the deep changes in the meaning of knowledge in the academy and elsewhere that are being effected by new technologies, with a focus on Wikipedia and other Web 2.0 applications. It’s a brief article, but I think Dede does a good job of clarifying what is going on, and manages to be more critical than EDUCAUSE authors are normally able to be (although he is not a knee-jerk “classicalist”).

Dede notes that at present, “the response of most educators is to ignore or dismiss this epistemological clash.” I think that’s somewhat true, but it’s partly because educators have so little time these days to reflect on the way that they teach and the way their curricula are structured (an important part of the problem). I like seeing things like this and I hope to see more thinking along these lines – further development of insights and clarification of problems and opportunities.