When Knowledge becomes NOWledge

“Just in Time Learning”

Published in Digital Learning Magazine

In my recent work with educational technology around the world we have started to use a new term that help to think about the issues surrounding about how younger digital age learners are participating in the teaching and learning process. I would like to put forth that our relationship with knowledge and information is also changing and that this should also eventually change how we teach, learn and work. In the past we “owned” knowledge. It was to be acquired, remembered and retained.  In school this of course manifests itself in the classic lecture or reading activities followed by some exercises and a test to see if the “Knowledge“ was retained (memorized). This has been extremely useful and successful in the past and still much of our standardized testing and comparisons such as PISA draw on this same model until present time. But we may need to consider if we teaching and measuring the wrong things in the wrong way for today’s needs.

Access to information is shared and no longer restricted just to library repositories, physical locations, or with learned individuals. It is now simply available 24/7 anywhere that you can get online; that that is increasingly almost everywhere. In businesses, access to information is essential to many jobs for utilizing and keeping track of information, adding value, communication, collaboration, production and for enhancing activities as well as jobs. A good analogy to consider is that of just-in-time manufacturing. 

This is where the parts show up just before a manufactured item is assembled or produced. Many factories today do not need large warehouses any more to store parts in advance; instead the parts arrive at the time of assembly or use and go directly to the production floor. I would like to put forth the concept of “Just-in-Time Learning”. We can see that businesses are restructuring themselves and their employees so as to have information when they need it and where they need it in order to perform their jobs. I think that kids now days are also treating information in a similar manner. Education in the past treated the mind to some extent like a warehouse; it was to be filled with information and knowledge in preparation for some future use. However, much like the hard drive on our computers, it seems that this function is shifting to cloud or information networks where it is always available and accessible when and where you need it.

My grandfather many decades ago said something extremely prescient to me when I was young: “it is not so important that you know something but is more important that you know how and where to find it”. This was in the day of libraries and limited information resources; it was quite true then as locating information was not so easy. His point was that it is a primary skill to know how to find information or where to find the answers. This was true then, but it is even much more important today and can be considered a vital or essential skill, it is certainly a 21st century skill.

Today’s youth are not interested in remembering or retaining information or facts in the old manner or to be asked to digest information according to some outdated curriculum and learning methodology. They are comfortable with the fact that information is literally at their fingertips, they know it is there when they need it and will always be so. They think it is useless to spend time remembering things that are commonly available; they are motivated to seek out information when they need it, in other words NOW and not before. In a previous generation we saw a somewhat similar situation in the resistance to learn math by longhand or manual calculations after the calculator was available. We now teach kids how to use calculators and computers in school. We now we may not need to fill the mental warehouse so much in advance but rather have an index or location techniques, we may start to treat the WWW or cloud as our part of our mental storehouse.

So when the need arises the youth of today will search and locate the information, bookmark it, organize it, digest it, analyze and manipulate it, put it to use to accomplish the task. Then they will file it or store it away for future use and reference and finally share it. The digital skills associated with these tasks are what we need to include in our teaching and learning programs so that they can become better at this. I have come up with a new term to express and define this use of just in time information: NOWledge.

The Oxford dictionary defines Knowledge as “information and skills acquired through experience or education. It is the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject”.

In updating this for the digital age, I propose that we alter this word to become NOWledge which we can define as just in time acquisition and use of information and/or skills facilitated and augmented by digital resources and networks. It is the theoretical or practical application of digital resources (information and software applications skills) to a problem at hand.

In this concept the digital domain constitutes or represents a significant factor in a person’s extended memory, resources and potential capabilities. It is in some ways a substitution for memory and even learning. This alters the way that information and its associated ideas and understanding are treated in that they do not have to be retained in the same way as in the pre-ubiquitous Internet age. The younger generations are starting to rely on technology for retaining information, you do not need to “know” and retain it in the old sense of filling the warehouse. Now days you need to only know how and where to find it, “bookmark” it and acquire the skills to use it.  In this new age the information is always there and growing, so access and navigation are what is important, as well as perhaps contributing to it and in a way becoming part of the information community. Also as software systems become more powerful they will provide enhancements to our skill sets and enable us to do things that we might not otherwise be able to do or to do it quicker. It is in fact a new way to acquire or access skills at a certain level whereas in the past they had to be acquired individually and mastered.

I find the new term of “NOWledge” to be a useful reference concept in reflecting on how the structure and activities of teaching and learning can or should change. How can we use NOWledge in the learning process? What skills should we teach to use this more effectively? What tools and applications should we introduce to the students to make this effective? How can this concept be infused into the curriculum and importantly how should it be assessed?  These are interesting points to ponder for our future forward thinking. I welcome suggestions and comments on this topic so as to continue to refine and expand the concept. Perhaps we could take it to the cloud as this seems to be the new place of NOWledge!

About the author: Steven McKee has been working in international education for over 35 years in developing and newly developed countries. He is the President and founder of Labtech International Ltd. (www.labtech.org) which is based in S.E. Asia, he also serves on the Executive board of World Didac and is actively involved in designing 21st century learning solutions. Email: steve@labtech.org 

LinkedIn Profile: http://www.garudax.id/in/stevenmckee