Sunday, September 16, 2018

Preparing Students to Ask Questions

I drove behind a Google Maps Street view car for a couple of miles today. Things I wondered about:

  • Will my car show up on Street View?
  • What is it like to be one of those drivers?
  • What sort of meta data are they collecting?

That last question is key. I thought of that because I know something about computer science. I also know that there has be controversy about this in the past. I think I would have wondered about the meta data anyway though.

What is the meta data? What is it used for? Who has access to the data? Lots of questions of the sort we, society, need people to ask. Not just computer scientists but all sorts of people. How are they going to know to ask if they don’t understand what meta data is or how it can be used?

Getting people a basis of knowledge so that they know to ask questions is every bit as important as the “answers” we make them show on exams and quizzes. This is why we need computer science for everyone.

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