My Daughter came home with one of the lateral thinking brainteaser questions for homework yesterday. You know the type; you have a bag of grain, a duck and a fox on one side of the river and you have to take them across the river in a boat etc… It WASN’T this question, rather it had a visual component – dots on a page and she needed to separate all the dots by drawing only two boxes.

I had never come across this question before so I didn’t immediately know the answer any better than she did. It sat on the table as we continued our evening chores, and I contemplated how I could help her to solve this question considering I didn’t know the answer. She went her way and I went mine until about 5 minutes later when she reappeared at the table pleased as punch to reveal the answer for me to see.

My heart immediately sunk as I realised how she had managed to come up with this answer so confidently. But before I confirm your suspicions I will take a few moments to reflect on  why this little event really upset my applecart from both a teacher and a parent point of view.

 

When teachers (and parents) challenge kids with these questions, they don’t do so to frustrate and annoy, we understand that they important as the building blocks of problem solving skills our kids will need throughout their lives to varying degrees. In generations before now, when our children bought home these puzzles, the outcome could probably go one of 3 ways.

Scenario 1: An older brother or sister would look over their should and say, “I know that question, Mrs Jones gave that to us when I was in her class”. Then quick as a flash they would draw the answer and scarper out of the room before the inevitable hue and cry.

Scenario 2: A parent or ‘teacher’, who may or may not know the answer, will work with the learner to discuss, debate, experiment, reflect and refine the thinking processes to hopefully discover the answer.

Scenario 3: despite the best of intentions, the learner loses focus, interest, motivation or any combination of the above and makes the decision to walk away without a solution – sometimes to never discover the solution.

 

Of the three above scenarios I’m sure most would agree that the second option is our preference in terms of optimal learning experiences and that the value is often more in the processes of struggling to discover an answer to a problem than the outcome itself.

However, our generation now have a hugely appealing 4th option to choose from to discover the answer to this brainteaser…GOOGLE IT.

No surprises then, that this is exactly what my Miss did when it was quickly apparent that I didn’t know the answer. She was quite pleased with herself at this solution to this particular problem and in many ways I can’t blame her for seeking this process to solve said brainteaser, HOWEVER…if we go back to scenario 1 – where an older sibling had jumped in with the answer, we can well imagine how the rest of this scene might unfold. Helping someone to work towards solutions to problems is not the same thing as ‘giving someone the answer’ with little or no effort. I love google and how it can help me in my life for some things but we still need to be reminded that we need to ‘use its powers for good not evil’. We need to help our kids to know how and when to use it for good help and not allow it to ‘steal our opportunity to learn’.

It doesn’t matter how good Google is now, or will continue to develop to be, nothing can replace the guidance of teachers and parents to discern when and how it should be used to enhance your learning processes, not steal them from you.

FOOTNOTE – This post took at least an hour to write and I’m still not sure I’m completely happy with it, but in the spirit of #28daysofwriting challenge i’m posting it regardless of my concerns about the quality of my writing craftmanship.