What's
in this "QUICK
EDUCATION" page?
• Two Quick
Educations: Introduction and Exploration
• A "Cliffs Notes" Approach: A
Distilled Essence of Ideas
• The
Fascinating Drama of Ideas and Stop-and-Go
Reading
plus a closer look at "Two Quick Educations," and a mini-Sitemap.
Two
Quick
Educations: Introduction and Exploration
This website
for Science Education will help you learn quickly, on two levels:
INTRODUCTION: First,
we'll quickly provide a coherent overview of important ideas, to help
you understand
the ideas and their relationships.
EXPLORATION: Then to
help you explore more deeply, we'll link to pages that examine the
ideas
and relationships
in more depth.
We'll help you learn quickly and well, by carefully selecting high-quality pages for you to explore. But our selectivity is not censorship, and on both levels — introduction and exploration — we'll adopt a "multiple views" approach by explaining the views of people with different perspectives, so you can be well informed while you develop your own perspectives.
This is an introduction. An exploration of Quick Educations is at the end of this page, following A Cliffs Notes Approach and The Drama of Ideas.
A "Cliffs Notes" Approach
This section explains how, in
three decisions and a library, I (the website editor) recognized the
similarity between Cliffs Notes and the introductory
level of the ASA Science Ed website.
The first two decisions were easy. Yes,
I would watch the movies. No, I would not read the books. In either
form, in movies or books, Lord of the Rings is a classic. Although
I
would
enjoy
reading
the
trilogy
by
Tolkien, time is the stuff life is made of, and I decided
that reading three large books would not be a good use of my time. But
reading
one
small book
would
be
quick and useful, so I decided to read the summary/analysis written
by Gene Hardy for Cliffs Notes. And having an introductory overview of "the
big picture" — provided by Hardy's summary of the three books — helped
me
understand
and
enjoy
the
three
movies.
In the two weeks between seeing
the first
movie (on DVD) and second movie (in theater), I attended a "Following
Christ" conference. It was organized by InterVarsity Christian Fellowship,
and included a temporary library of books by InterVarsity Press. While
browsing the tables filled with high-quality books, reading the back covers,
table of contents,
and occasional pages, I thought about the many fascinating ideas I would miss
because
I wouldn't
be able to invest the time needed to read these books. I
was also thinking about Lord of the Rings and the practical educational
value
of
reading one small book instead of three large books, and I made a connection
between
booktable and website. It would be useful
for me to
have a condensation of important
ideas from
books on the table, and giving you a
condensation containing the distilled essence of important ideas is the
goal of the introductory pages in this website.
a quick note about Cliffs Notes: Although some
teachers (and literary purists) criticize the goals of
Cliffs Notes — to summarize
and analyze — I think
this type of supplement can be educationally useful if it's
wisely
used,
not
lazily
abused.
The Drama of
Ideas
If you're fascinated by the drama
of ideas — if you enjoy a vigorous yet respectful discussion between people with
differing ideas — you'll find that much of this website is filled with
fascinating drama. And the rest is a cooperative "sharing
of ideas" about the exciting adventure of thinking, learning, and teaching.
Most home-pages,
and some introductory
pages,
are written by me. As a writer, one of my main goals is to give you
a high ratio for "what you learn / the time you invest" so here
are two tips for reading what I write, based on the principle that you'll
want
to
read
a web-page
if it's useful and/or fun:
An effective strategy
for learning is stop-and-go reading: read for awhile, stop
and think, then do it again. What I write is usually a "distilled
essence of important ideas" so there isn't much to read, but
there is a lot to think about. The overall result is that you can learn
a lot, quickly and well, and this is useful.
An effective motivator is wanting
to learn. Are
my pages fun? If you think fun requires humor, probably
not. But if
you're excited
by ideas, and you enjoy learning and thinking, you'll probably think my pages
are fun
because they'll help you explore the drama of ideas, and you will enjoy this
exploration.
And
sometimes you have an escape route: If you don't like my
introductory pages, you can read the introductions by
other authors. :<)
In the near future,
we (in ASA) will do more to "spice up" the
whole website, to make it more "fun" for you,
with an increase of illustrative stories plus content-relevant cartoons and
other
graphics, with "read me first" pages and FAQs. Our goal is
to serve those who are "fascinated by the drama
of ideas" and want to learn
a lot, and also those who only want
to learn a little, or who aren't
convinced they
want to learn anything. {more about improving
the website}
An
Exploration of "Two Quick Educations" In the introductory phase,
our goal is to briefly summarize ideas in a way that is clear and simple,
so you can easily understand, yet without oversimplifying and losing
the inherent richness of the ideas and their relationships. Although
complex ideas are often simplified in an overview, this should be done
skillfully, in a way that is accurate (although incomplete) and is
consistent with the best available scholarship. This accuracy
will allow a smooth transition to an exploratory phase, since you won't
have to "unlearn what you already learned" when you continue to learn
more. You can retain the accurate-yet-incomplete ideas from the
introductions, and fill in the details as you learn more. We have searched the
web, and consulted our network of colleagues and have selected pages — for
introduction and exploration — that we think will help you learn
quickly and well, because you'll be reading only high-quality pages.* This
also makes it easier to use the website because you won't be overwhelmed
with too many choices, so you can more easily decide what to do first
and what to do next. * Selectivity is important but this takes time, and currently many parts of the website are underdeveloped. If you want to help improve the website — especially if you know a lot about a particular area (or you think it's interesting and you want to become more expert by studying it) and you want to be part of our "network of colleagues" — we can use your help, as explained in Developing and Improving the ASA Science Education Website. Website Structure: This
website has 7 areas with 17 sub-areas. The
homepage for each sub-area provides
an introductory overview of ideas and describes content-pages (introductory
and exploratory) by telling you what is in each page and why you may
want to read it. |
You can explore the grand Drama of Ideas by
visiting the HomePage,
Sitemap (which briefly describes "what's in each of
the areas"),
or any of the areas or sub-areas, whatever looks interesting.
This page, written by Craig Rusbult (website editor) is
http://www.asa3.org/ASA/education/quickedu.htm