Experts and Novices

One of the examples used in chapter 2 of How People Learn compared the way expert chess plaers approach the game differently than novice players (Bransford, J., 2000, p.22). As a skilled novice chess player who has played (and lost) to expert players, I found this example particularly apt and useful. One of the experts I met years ago told me that the difference between a beginner (he used the term "fish") and a master player is "what he sees." I believe a more accurate way to phrase it would be "what he looks at and knows not to bother looking at."

Bransford discusses the way expert and novice chess players will assess the same amount of information, but with the crucial difference that the expert rules out many lines of thought early on, while the novice looks at all options without being able to quickly determine which has value. The novice spends a lot of mental energy assessing pathways that the expert can see at a glance as dead ends. The expert recognizes patterns in the subject matter, in this case chess, as a result of practice, familiarity, and reflection on the material in such a way that allows them to identify general principles.

The example of the two teachers teaching Hamlet is an excellent demonstration of how awareness of the differences between novices and experts can be applied to the classroom (p. 34). The first teacher approached the class assuming the students were as expert as he; I was bored to the point of suffering just reading the description of how he presented the material. The second teacher approached the class on the basis that they were probably not experts in Shakespeare, but they were experts in the realm of their own emotions. By giving them a personal context around which to organize the material, he helped them begin the process of finding general principles in the material. I'm hesitant to assume that the latter teacher was more effective on the basis of this reading alone, but I would be very surprised if he were not.


Bransford, J. (2000). How people learn: Brain, mind, experience, and school. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.

McLuhan's Wake

As a lifelong technophile, I found myself initially resistant to what I perceived the be the Luddite nature of McLuhan's Wake. The day after we watched the video in class, I happened upon another, unrelated, video on comic books, which I've embedded below. Somewhere around the middle, the presenter is discussing the way comic books intersected with the new technology of computers. The first thing that was done was to simply plop the comic onto the screen as though it were a piece of paper in what the presenter called a "classic McLuhanesque mistake".

At this point, I had a sudden realization that I had interpreted McLuhan incorrectly. He was, in fact, stating the same thing I have always felt about the misuse of technology, namely that technology isn't innately good or bad, but that it's use defines its outcome. In trying to force the computer to be a piece of paper, to continue the above example, the technology became an impediment to the art form. Later on, comic artists adapted the comic to the increased possibilities presented by this new medium, what the presenter in the below video termed the "infinite canvas".

This same problem has plagued nearly every implementation of technology I have ever encountered. The users of the technology insist (or maybe can't resist) on seeing any new tool through the lens of the the worldview created by the old tool. Any attempt to do this will result in the tool being a burden to the old processes, rather than a way of augmenting and creating a new one. I've always had this idea, and now I realize I may have gotten it from McLuhan without even realizing it.