Article What do we need to know to start making a difference?
Question: what are the foundational kinds of knowledge that can be helpful on accelerating the way we learn everything else?
Answer:
- Domain language could be catgorized into vacabulary knowledge and ontological knowledge.
- Vocabulary knowledge, in the author's mind, is the very one that serves as the prerequisite, or to say the foundation, to understand and make some impact in a field.
- Ontological knowledge is more like to come from practicing, when you trying to take over a problem or advance the field forward.
Indeed, this kind of feeling is particularly true for me as a newbie in work. Couldn't relate more.
In the past 4 years, I took computer Sci & Eng related courses, did all projects and passed all exams with high score. But that didn't help as I entered work.I still felt nervous and quite helpless when I got some real-world problem to tackle with. With that I gained from school is almost vocabulary knowledge, it is understandable that I did not know what to do at the beginning.
But soon, as decribed in the article, I gained ontological knowledge while actually doing the work, instead of from textbooks and curricula,. Have to admit that without the vocabulary knowledge, I could not make it to absorb the practice experience that fast. The gap of insight between vocabulary knowledge and ontological knowledge seems to be no doubt a pit that every one needs to bridge as they want to enter a new field.