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Discussion on: Technology Must Know When to Say "I Don't Know"

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yechielk profile image
Yechiel Kalmenson

This is a bug in many humans as well.

The quality I respect most in teachers if the ability and humility to say "I don't know".

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ben profile image
Ben Halpern

Very true!

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bilus profile image
Bilus • Edited

Often, teachers who have the humility to say "I don't know" will give you hint on where they would search the answer. So in the Waze example, it could suggest a traffic radio link.

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ferricoxide profile image
Thomas H Jones II

They'd need a DB schema extension, for that ...and then someone to populate the new "traffic radio" field's broadcast-area GIS data. ;)

Even still, the value Waze (et. al.) typically brings is greater immediacy and accuracy vice what most traffic radio gets you. Prior to Waze, you usually had to wait until some regular interval for the commercial radio station to air it's traffic segment. This was often only once or twice an hour (and as frequently as every ten minutes on the traffic-specializing local news-only stations). Worse, once you complete the wait for that radio station's traffic-report, the data reported was typically 30+ minutes stale. Translation: saying "check the radio" is probably at least as bad as revising time-estimates based on crowd-sourced current speeds/distance calculations. Even "tune to the metro-area's regional traffic-service frequency" is a hand-wave: while that has immediacy, the data tends to still be of "best guess" nature.

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peiche profile image
Paul

My wife and I homeschool our daughter. We're not afraid to say "I don't know, but let's see if we can learn!" This teaches several things:
a) adults don't know everything, and that's okay
b) not knowing the answer is nothing to be ashamed of
c) you're never too old to ask questions
d) you're never too old to stop learning

Cheers!

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yechielk profile image
Yechiel Kalmenson

I used to teach third grade.

I used to love when a kid asked a question I didn't know the answer. It gave us a chance to try and research it together as a class.

If we couldn't find an answer in a reasonable amount of time I would have the kids take the question home and see if they could get the answers there.

Bonus benefit: it got some parents involved in the class that otherwise would not have :)

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Benjamin D Wakefield

One of the best teachers I had was my HS history teacher; there were some times he was asked a question and he would say "I don't know the answer to that but I will research it and find out for you."

It was so much nicer than getting a total BS response.