Who said it first? Who said it best?

I am continuously surprised by how quickly people are turning to technology to do their thinking for them. It is as though we are unwilling to do the hard cognitive work anymore and this worries me. Students will not be able to think well in the future if we don't give them opportunities to carry the cognitive load. We need to let them sit with questions for longer periods of time and join up their thinking with others.

Recently I was in a conversation about citing authors and plagiarism. There were lots of questions, what is plagiarism anyway? where does AI fit into this conversation? etc. One point of view which I appreciated was the idea of provenance. Where did the ideas come from, who originated them and in response to what? One interesting point of view was the idea of having a conversation with other authors in academic writing. Placing yourself in the discussion, as if gossiping, "he said this" and "then she said that" and "you won't believe what they said".

This viewpoint made me think how quickly we turn to the technology to answer even the most basic questions nowadays. We are knowledge rich but wonder poor. In my ongoing work as an IBEN I have concluded that the only real learning is when we have questions. Just like a conversation, we use interactions to find out and learn. I considered how this looks for a student when we don't give them AI to answer what might be supposedly simple questions. The answer for me was, develop a protocol. Who said it first? Who said it best? seem like questions you would quickly google or ask Chat GPT. But what if we didn't. What if instead we used butcher paper, simple questions and the power of collaborative thought. This protocol could be used with any concept. What is it we already know or think we know about this concept? Where did the idea come from. Whose point of view does it represent? How has this concept manifested and changed over time? Ironically emerging concepts often do come from technological advances. Can you think of any? Try not to AI it!

Who said it first? Who said it best? A simple protocol but with the potential for deep thinking. And in the end it's just an idea, which others are free to use, adapt and innovate upon. Enjoy asking questions and thinking!