Gabriel Wood

TOK Exhibition

The TOK prompt I chose was: “What is the relationship between personal experience and knowledge?” This exhibition explores this prompt by reflecting what we learn through knowledge compared to what we learn based on our own personal experiences. Some people learn better through their own personal experience because they are getting hands-on experience while others may learn to do something the wrong way without knowing. 

Object 1: A Bowling Ball

For my first object I chose a bowling ball. Anybody can bowl but to get good at bowling it takes time and effort. A lot of people go bowling with their friends and family thinking that all there is to bowling is throwing a ball and hopefully getting pins down but there's more to it than that. They are just bowling based on their own knowledge without any experience. Bowling isn't as simple as you think. There are many different factors for bowling such as getting the right ball for you, the right weight, where you are going to hit your mark out on the lane, if you're going to hook the ball or throw it straight, and much more. This object highlights that most skills can’t be perfected right away and that knowledge is important for personal experience. In order to be good at bowling you have to have knowledge on how to bowl first. This is where personal experience benefits from knowledge. Bowlers with more knowledge and experience understand what they are going to do when they send that ball down on the lane and if the ball doesn’t do what they want it to do they know based on their personal experience that they have to adjust. If a person who does not know how to bowl goes and bowls a bad game and then tries to fix their mistake they could accidentally teach themselves the wrong way to bowl affecting their scores. This is where personal experience benefits from knowledge. This shows that most skills require some background knowledge in order to benefit off of your own personal experience.

Object 2: Percussion/Drumline

I chose a drum for my next object. I chose this object because being on drumline has helped me to realize that knowledge and personal experience benefit each other through time, practice, and repetition. Nobody can just magically pick up a drum for the first time and just be good at it. This is what practice is for. Practice allows you to get hands-on experience allowing yourself to gain knowledge along the way. It also takes time and repetition. Experiencing repetition over a period of time locks the knowledge in my brain allowing me to use it when I need it. It is useful when I have to memorize music for a performance. Another way that I gain knowledge while playing the drums is by messing up. Personal experience of messing up allows my brain to think about what I did and fix my mistake. It allows me to internalize the knowledge of what I did wrong so it won't happen again. In order for me to play the drums, I had to learn how to play them so when learning new things, sometimes you have to be taught the knowledge to be able to benefit from your own personal experience. You can not get good at something using personal experience if you don't even know how to do it in the first place. Especially when you are trying to learn how to play an instrument for the first time. 

Object 3: A Bike

For my final object I chose a bike. I chose a bike because it is controversial. There are over a billion bikes in the world and they are used all around the world. I also chose this as my object because if you have ever ridden a bike, you know it takes personal experience to be able to ride it when you first start. When you are younger it takes you multiple tries to ride a bike for the first time. It takes personal experience to gain knowledge when trying to ride a bike for the first time. It is really hard for kids to learn how to ride a bike for the first time when their training wheels come off. Especially because they have no knowledge on how to ride the bike. Nobody can just hop on a bike for the first time and be able to ride it perfectly. It takes lots of practice and it is best to learn while you're younger. You learn how to ride the bike by using personal experience on attempting to use the petals. You learn how to improve your experience of riding the bike by experiencing multiple failures which shows you what works and what does not allowing you to gain more knowledge on how to ride it the right way. It shows how knowledge can be obtained during failures of experiences allowing you to learn from the mistake. I chose this object carefully to show that knowledge can be learned on how to do something through personal experiences by learning from trial and error. That is how I taught myself to ride a bike when I was little.

Based on all the objects I have shown, each of them show how knowledge is related to personal experience. It takes personal experience to gain knowledge and knowledge to better personal experience depending on the object. Anybody can benefit off of knowledge and personal experience and when you use them together it is even better. These objects also show that if you have basic knowledge on how something works, but don't use it correctly, it will not benefit you in any kind of way and could develop a bad habit of teaching yourself something the wrong way. Next time you are trying something new that you have no idea how to do, try to get some background knowledge to get an idea of how to do it.