TOK Journal Introduction
Welcome to your first TOK Journal. The focus for our first journal enter is Knowledge and Technology.
The goal of this assignment is for you to think about TOK ideas outside of class and write down those thoughts. Doing this will help you gain a mastery of the ideas and approaches of the class and help you communicate your ideas through writing which can be difficult in a class like this.
A journal entry should be based on a concrete, real life situation (RLS). A RLS can be a response to a personal experience, a topic learned about in school (outside of TOK), a current event, or some form of media (TV show, movie, book, artwork, etc.). This doesn’t necessarily have to be something that happened to you. Your decision about what to write about is up to you.
In your response, you should:
Briefly explain the RLS that you are responding to.
Identify the relevant knowledge question-you may choose from the following:
How do we engage with and understand information?
Does our knowledge depend on our interactions with other knowers?
How can we distinguish between knowledge, belief and opinion?
How might the context in which knowledge is presented influence whether it is accepted or rejected?
What features of knowledge have an impact on its reliability?
What challenges are raised by the dissemination and/or communication of knowledge?
To what extent is the internet changing what it means to know something?
How do we understand ourselves?
How do we understand the world?
Discuss your thoughts and ideas on that question.
Discuss the connections to TOK. You can discuss the implications of your thoughts or talk about perspective, culture, the definitions of truth, knowledge, or belief, or reflections on the a knowledge community you are a part of. Choose a key concept to connect to.
Connect your discussion back to your real life situation.
Rubric
20-18-All aspects of the assignment were met with a high level of personal engagement. Thoughtfully and thoroughly completed. Work had well-developed connections and discussions of issues related to TOK. Appropriately worded and discussed knowledge question
Knowledge question may not have been appropriately worded or discussed
Discussion may have been superficial.
Here is a sample Journal Entry: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1fKl_FWXEu-bDz6ustpKsNID6zMBsfEhc/view?usp=drive_link
ReplyDeleteThis is Kaiya's Journal Entry:
ReplyDelete"What challenges are raised by the dissemination and/or communication of knowledge?"
(BTW this is going to be my exhibition item.)
Back when I was homeschooled, most of my curriculum was physical textbooks. My mom struggled to find secular AND quality curriculum, and we settled on Saxon Algebra I. My schoolwork in this book was to do the evens or the odds of the mixed practice(my choice) and all of the warmup and lesson specific practice. In the back of the book, there are answers for the odds of the mixed questions, all of the warmup as well as the lesson specific practices. I didn’t really enjoy math(easily frustrated) and it was an obstacle to what I wanted to do(play Fortnite). Fortnite was my main social space and I was heavily isolated, so spending as much time as possible on Fortnite was a dream and my happy space. So I chose to copy the answers. I subsequently passed by participation points only. I failed almost every test I took. Let’s just say, Mr. Clark was a wonderful Algebra 1 teacher(I chose to repeat Algebra I for freshman year). I traded the lack of time for a lack of knowledge by misusing the answer key.
One challenge presented by the dissemination of knowledge is that it will be misused. Easy access to knowledge, like answer keys and AI summaries, can lead to misuse or shortcuts, thus bypassing the learning process. I didn’t learn a whole year of math because I misused the answer sheet. A newspaper skewed an article about Covid-19 and the efficacy of the masks to make it seem like the masks increased the contraction rate of Covid. We all have goals when it comes to using knowledge, whether it’s to teach a kid math, or that the carnival game is technically winnable, or to influence the public opinion of a mandate. Whose responsibility is it to decide the uses of knowledge? How do we ensure that we take responsibility in the dissemination of knowledge and that we don’t misuse knowledge? We ask our moral compass and our conscience and find ways to hold ourselves accountable. We look at the contents and ask “what am I missing?” and figure it out. Why would we misuse information? We misuse information unintentionally, in which case we take responsibility and correct it, or we misuse it for our benefit. The benefit of the answer key was that I got to spend time with kids my age on Fortnite and socialize, while my math grade was abysmal due to misuse. I misused it for my benefit. I knew I was doing the wrong thing, and that this was a terrible move integrally and academically. I chose to cheat, for my short-term benefit. It hurt me in the long run, by hindering my mathematical capabilities. In the end, I took partial responsibility for my academic dishonesty by understanding why and how I flunked 8th grade math and I took responsibility by putting in extra effort into my studies at Odyssey.
How can we distinguish between knowledge, belief and opinion?
ReplyDeleteWe can distinguish between knowledge, belief, and opinion by finding what can be proven as truth. People are entitled to their opinions and belief, however it can not compare to true knowledge such as science or professional evidence. For my example, I chose the overturning of the supreme court case Roe v Wade. One of main reasoning for the new decision in the case was because of the growing belief and opinion that in the womb the growing child was considered a baby and therefore a living being. According to science, we have knowledge that in the womb the child is considered an embryo and eventually a fetus, not a living human being. While everyone has different beliefs and opinions on the ethics of abortion, knowledge has shown us the facts about abortion and pre-natal science. The supreme court used beliefs and opinions over scientific knowledge to make a decision which raises the question if the previous knowledge is correct over opinions and beliefs.
How do we understand the world?
ReplyDeleteWe understand the world through experiences and theories. The world around us that we’ve inhabited for million and millions of years still remains a mystery. Over the many millennia that humans have existed, we’ve discovered things that disprove what was previously thought to be true and have slowly but surely discovered more about the world. What is accepted as true and knowledge in one time eventually becomes accepted as a past belief in another as more is uncovered that refutes past claims. We study the past and it seems strange that at one point people believed certain things, though they accepted it as fact.
A real life situation of this is when people thought the Earth was the center of the solar system. We now know that this is not the case, however people of ancient times didn’t. In their time it made sense: the sun and moon rise and set over the Earth so they must be orbiting Earth and thus it’s the center of the solar system. However, more and more evidence and, very much later, space exploration and satellites disproved this claim. From these experiences and theoreticals, we use what we know to make a claim that makes sense and accept it as a fact. As time goes on, the claim remains true or is replaced by a new claim developed from new knowledge. We understand our world differently at different times and as the world continues, our knowledge of it evolves with it.
How do we engage with and understand information?
ReplyDeleteTo engage with and understand information, we process it by using prior knowledge, asking questions, and making connections. All people are capable of learning and depending on the way that information is communicated, we are actively constructing meaning from material rather than just receiving it. Going beyond simply reading or listening, thinking about the information, making connections to existing knowledge, helps forming your own interpretations. For example, a personal experience for me that is applicable to this question is how I am learning Mandarin in school. When I am learning the language, I am understanding the information by translating the structure of sentences, using context clues, and using my existing knowledge to interpret the different meanings of unfamiliar words. The process of learning a language involves listening, speaking, and writing. This allows for deeper comprehension of the content and the world around us. I found myself having to learn in different ways to better understand the curriculum, making it so I have to approach the information almost entirely opposite to the way I learn in other classes. Overall, this was an example of how I engage with and understand information.
How might the context in which knowledge is presented influence whether it is accepted or rejected?
ReplyDeleteThe context in which knowledge is presented can be the defining factor if something is accepted or rejected as fact. Many times, humans have an innate belief in knowledge that is presented to them, especially when it is presented with confidence and/or is from a valid source, or at least one that appears to be valid. Although the internet contains a plethora of sources to validate knowledge, the majority of people will not go to great lengths when mindlessly scrolling social media. An example of this that I have see is the confusing stirred up by satirical news accounts. As a casual fan of Disney and Disneyland, I occasionally come across content about the park and upcoming events when scrolling Instagram. There is an account notorious for posting satirical content about "news" and changes coming to the park. This is presented with a serious tone and is seemingly indistinguishable from content containing the correct information from similar non-satirical accounts. Generally, older generations lack social media literacy, making it easy for them to fall victim to online scams and lies. This can also happen to younger generations when the knowledge is presented as fact. I will oftentimes see videos of older people, especially when the content is politically charged, commenting on the video as if it is fact because to them it is. This raises the issue of the presentation of knowledge and its ability to leave an impact if it is presented in a way that is viewed as invalid. The inverse is also true; misinformation can spread quickly and lead to convoluted knowledge if it is conveyed in a confident and professional manner. This serves as a warning to people of all generations to verify knowledge, regardless of the apparent validity of the source or message it seeks to deliver.
The video I was referencing: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DB2AlbZy54u/?igsh=MWxqMnFtODl6Nm9o