My lab has a huge listserv(?) to send out to all of our orthopaedic surgery labs, and one of the emails last week was not the usual meeting, or broken machine. In short, it was an article explaining that kids need to be able to understand what the science they're doing is, not just to read the instructions and try super hard to make the experiment work. I think that's incredibly relevant, and the person sending it was spot on in saying it's important in today's society.
Little aside, one of the witty people send back something that I chuckled at.
"What? You expect men to actually read the instructions AND understand them? "
I hope this link goes to the right source. But if not, you can look it up for yourselves. The paper is Nature America, and the article is "Training the Kit generation" ENJOY!
Students need to 'experiment outside the box.' Another way of saying that is that everyone needs the time and liberty to make mistakes and to learn by doing.
ReplyDeleteThe editorial is in Nature Methods 8 (2011): 983. http://www.nature.com/nmeth/journal/v8/n12/index.html#ed