What have you been learning in TOK?

[Katierox342]

It's a supervised spare once u finish the first draft of the essay

[avrila]

I learnt to look at something from different angles. I become more open minded. Kind of know what others think.

But in my first TOK class. I was asleep...

We will realize about the things that we learnt in TOK as soon as we finish IB.

[Tilia]

ToK is about why you can't trust what you're learning in the other subjects

[IBdoc]

Basically, we talked about the ways of knowing like perception, emotion, reason etc.. Each way of knowing took us like a month or two. Next up are the areas of knowledge and I think we're going to study each one in details. TOK is a lot of work at my school!

[whitemermaid]

we pretty much do nothing in TOK I thought it would be an interesting class but we sit around and sparingly do anything productive....

[lindieeluieee]

Do you have a TOK course companion or other sort of textbook?

Just have look at the headings in the book and you can get a clear overview of all the things you are supposed to have covered or will cover.

[Chesire_Cat]

Today was my first TOK class, and it looks like we'll talk about how we know what we know and the different ways of knowing. I looked at the titles for the essay and they seemed pretty confusing. We only have it for one year, will that affect how effective our essays will be?

[Capa]

The first year we only watchedinteresting youtube clips and talked about them afterwards. The second year, we got a new teacher and now we are learning about ways of knowing and so on. Reading a lot of different articles and talking about them.

[biochem]

I have TOK for a single year as well. CAT that is a good question.

most people argue that if you complete the essays while you are in TOK for a single year, that it is much better. The information is tested, done with. However, such an assesment is astronomically relative,that it serves no purpose to question it :/

It is all about the teachers approach. I have quizzes and daily journals, so some would say I have a much broader horizon of TOK perspective than those classes which merely "talk" everything out. I mean we have discussion, but my teacher tries to incorporate all of it in.

Personally, TOK for 2 years would be extremely boring, and it would just take up valuable time. I think the 1 year, run-through, is a good idea.

[saritaoel]

i started TOK just yesterday and i find it really interesting! what we've been doing is talking about the TOK diagram thats given in the syllabus and if there are any flaws with it. the other thing that we've done is go through parts of the syllabus and see what strikes us as the most interesting parts of the class, things like "acquiring knowledge in the other IB classes and coming to TOK and questioning that knowledge." So far, I find the class really interesting but i've only had one class, so I dont know how i feel about it yet!

[Toth]

Wow, at least you guys learn the things required to learn through IB.

We have a hippie teacher teaching us TOK, he doesn't teach us much other than the Ways of Knowing and the Areas of Knowledge.

He spends every class somehow relating each ethical issue back to the universal theme of Love.

Everyday he pops an ethical issue, such as "Should Prostitution be legalized?" and we're supposed to be opposing each other in arguments, but our IB kids don't produce good arguments at all.

It's just sleeping time.

[Chelleee]

just questioning EVERYTHING around you.

what is perception? how do i know what i perceive is true? how can i trust my senses? do i really exist? how is language used? what is language? what does it mean? how what why blah blah blah

its circles really.

but its interesting at the same time...

Edited February 3, 2009 by Chelleee

[Chesire_Cat]

I find it interesting, but once you understand that you don't really know anything, questions such as "How do we know what we know for sure?" and "How do we know something is the truth" become pretty repetitive, in my opinion. I'm waiting to get into controversial topics so that I can have discussions.

[Mahuta ♥]

First day questions:

Whats your name? How do you know its spelt that way? How do you your parents told you the right thing? How do you know they're YOUR parents? How do you know you know!

I hated first day, lol.

But TOK was amazing, it still is. We argue about global issues, politics, everything.

I really like TOK, now is going to be more fun because we're done with presentation and essay.

Edited February 8, 2009 by mahuta

[helgacakes]

i think TOK is amazing (: it's like you re-think everything that you thought you knew already.

for example, after the art unit--i'm supposed to consider souljaboy a piece of art in a dance form.? i completely disagree but yeah.

[IB_sucks]

at my school, we really dont have good tok teachers, and we only have 1.5 hours of class each week. Also, no one really takes it seriously. Does anyone think this will affect how my essay could turn out. Every lesson, all that our teacher does is give us a one page useless summary of the chapter and she just reads through it. I usually read the chapter from the book to understand it more and get more ideas. Does anyone think this will affect how my TOK grade will be.

[greaterthaninfinity]

My teacher has divided TOK, essentially, into the four ways of knowing: emotion, sense perception, reason, and language. We tend to incorporate a variety of problems of knowledge, linking ideas, and areas of knowledge as we study these different ways of knowing separately. Everything is pretty much connected, and we generally have in-class discussions to prep us for writing tasks and presentations. I don't really think you learn anything from the teacher, necessarily, in ToK. You are guided to uncover the wealth of knowledge that you already have.

[hanz]

wer taking about mathematics ! is mathematics invented or discovered ?

[narathiel]

We started off learning about the ways of knowing and are now moving on to the areas of knowing, starting with natural sciences and how experiments were conducted at first.

We looked at each of the 4 ways of knowing for a long time and answered many questions about them in a TOK matter which helped us for our essays but was generally very boring to do.

We watched the movie 12 Angry Men which is truly an amazing film which all of you should watch. We had to write an essay about the ways of knowing and their advantages and disadvantages in this movie. This is one of the best movies ever.

[Sandwich]

We never argued or discussed anything. Or had a textbook.

Just sat and learnt that the eskimos have 22 words for snow and what the scientific method is. I actually really detested TOK. After two years, I still couldn't tell you what it is

All I really learnt from it is that defining 'truth' and 'knowledge' is absolutely impossible and gives you a right headache. Ultimately I concluded that we'll all probably be fine knowing what these things mean without writing it down I got through the TOK essay by sticking to the marking criteria like glue!