This is a brilliant idea...
Tell a lie.
What a cool idea for a class like that. I liked it a lot.
posted by Thomas Kyte at 7:50 AM
Friday, December 29, 2006
About Me
- Name: Thomas Kyte
- Location: Round Hill, Virginia, United States
The views expressed are my own and not necessarily those of Oracle and its affiliates. The views and opinions expressed by visitors to this blog are theirs and do not necessarily reflect mine. I've been using Oracle since 1988. I've been working at Oracle since 1993 (version 7.0). I spend way too much time working on asktom.oracle.com...
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9 Comments:
I REALLY like that idea. Forces the students to pay attention, forces them to review their notes and, most importantly, forces them to challenge what they are told, instead of arbitrarily accepting everything the teacher said "because he is the teacher"
I think, when/if I ever teach, I'll incorporate that idea
The Michael Crichton quote at the end is interesting too. Ouch! And that's from 1996! Somehow it made me think about 9/11 - war on terror - Iraq...
Nice, when are you going to implement this in 'Ask Tom' ?
Happy 2007
Rob Zijlstra
Hmm.. maybe I should preface all my presentations and e-mails that way. Given enough time, I'll probably unintentionally lie anyway just by forgetting to mention an important caveat or otherwise misspeaking.
I already assume attendees know when I'm guessing when I start a sentence with "I don't know... but" followed by furious hand-waving and use of the words "maybe" and "probably" about 10 times before ending my thought. [Note: Those words already appear 4 times in this comment] Hopefully that is a cue to students / readers that they would have to research the full answer themselves.
Now I know what to do when I am confident but wrong.
Anyway, have a happy 2,007 - aka The year "Casino Royale" should have been released.
I hate being forced to do anything.
This sort of fun intellectual challenge can be good when used in extreme moderation, but if every teacher in every class used it, it would quickly become no fun. Like humor or surprise, a teacher with no gift for using the technique correctly would be better off not using it at all. Any time you try to artificially enhance student motivation you run the risk of rubbing certain motivations the wrong way, because you can't predict what intrinsic motivations and learning techniques students have.
But hey, where it works, fine. I'm just having trouble with it being a meme turning into a fad, thence to tradition and cruelty, like the Socratic method in bad movies about boy's schools.
word: zxuhdddp
Tom - great link.
Happy new year!
This reminds me of some fibbing that was used in the excellent Virgin Encyclopaedia of Jazz. IIRC the forward of this reference work includes a piece explaining about the inclusion of some very specific, unique and verifiable untruths that the authors had included. It might seem odd to include misinformation in an encyclopaedia but the reason was to discourage and/or prosecute plagiarists. Similar to the tutorial lie the result of this sanctioned fib is that the reader is encouraged to be more attentive. I can think of Code Monkey situations where this approach would be useful too...
Simon
Our UFO has landed quietly last night in a densely populated coordinate at a region humans refer to as "Germany."
This particular congregation was generating so much noise we were compelled to study the anomaly.
As we approached the boiling source of haphazard frequencies, our superb training took over. We were well-trained to
investigate any unusual source and level of human commotion and report immediately back to our ZX-879 headquarters.
Turning on our invisibility shield helped us get really close to the subject of examination without being detected.
As we reached the egg shaped concrete container filled with 100,000 or so human subjects, the noise level rose to
such unimaginable heights that we had to shut down our frequency analyzers for fear of damaging their sensitive
circuitry.
When we cleared the top of the concrete structure we were blinded with thousands of light-emitting radiation
sources.
Then we saw them -- 22 voluntary humans darting back and forth in alternating sequences of random and
seemingly-goal-oriented sprints. We have checked our central computer to decipher the modal characteristic of such
kinetic outbursts and we were advised to locate the focal source of coordinated agitation.
hi kyte,
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Regards,
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