At home, alone with our computers, it seems that we surely have all the information at our fingertips that we might ever need. Someone recently asked me why on earth we need “schools” of any kind. Have you begun to wonder that too?

Carl Sagan said, “We’ve arranged a global civilization in which most crucial elements. . . profoundly depend on science and technology. We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster.” John Naisbitt said, “We are drowning in information but starved for knowledge.”

Information has to do with facts, data, visualizations, specifics and organization for a purpose. We must have it to gain knowledge, but it is NOT knowledge.

What is knowledge? How does it differ from information?

Knowledge, has to do with experiences, skills, understandings, truths, principles and the power to do or make. Knowledge requires daily interaction with stuff and with people.  It has to do with patterns noticed, examined and discussed. It has to do with models that make it useful.  It requires something from the persons involved:  the ability to think, to verify and to analyze.

Helen Keller said, ” Knowledge is love and light and vision.