From: Eugene Matusov
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Date: 08 Oct 1996
Time: 23:29:01
Hello everybody--
Christie raised privatly an excellent question yesterday. She asked (and Christie, please, correct me if I'm not exact) can you provide guidance for children you ouserves are not knowledgeable about the activity?
I think that this $50,000 question. Do you know that UC Berkley has postponed students going to the site because they want students train in the games? If you read first two assigned papers, you may see that the answer on these questions depends on educational philosophy.
I hope I''ll have a chance to talk about one study that I did with a traditional and innovative (emphasizing collaborative guidance and learning) public elementary schools in Utah. I ask the same questions kids from these two schools. Kids from the traditional school answer, "Of course, not." Kids from the innovative school answer, "Of course, yes." When I asked the kids from innovative school to elaborate they said that if more knowledgeable person works on a unsolved problem together with less knowedgeable person, the first one inevetably guids the second one by demonstrating more sophistcated approaches to the problem.
I guess the main difference between the kids from these two school is that formerkids think about knowledge as a product that can exist separate from the people; while the latter kids treat knowledge as a process that inseparate from the people.
Eugene
PS Thanks, Christie, for the great question.