| Life You're both the teacher and the learner and you figure out what's right or wrong. Your parents guide you, your friends, books, media, strangers... | Learning at School The teacher teaches, the book tells you what's right or wrong. |
| Friends all over the place, you help each other. | Friends all over the place, you help each other but they call that cheating. |
| You ask questions all the time, there are usually no right answers. Things with right answers, you basically never have to remember because they're in books, pamphlets and websites. Just remember stealingis bad and killing is also bad. | You ask questions... sometimes -when there is time. There are right answers. If the teacher doesn't know the right answer, it won't be in the test. |
| Everything is related. | Everything is related - English is in period one, Economics period two, maths period 3... and they come after one another. |
| Family, friends, community, past, present, future, stories, opinions, jokes... | Facts and formulae |
| Every problem is different and it matters how you handle it.. | Every problem is the same (but wearing different clothes) and your grade says the answer matters most. |
| Information comes from every facet, in every form imaginable | Academia is preorganised, prepackaged and your response preconceived. You just have to copy notes into your workbook... |
And they wonder why we're confused and bored... hmm must think about this more... comments welcome...:)
Why do educators always ask, "what does this have to do with education?" I mean, education is learning stuff, learning how to learn stuff and you learn every moment of your life, so why shouldn't everything automatically relate to education? It's like the broadest term ever and yet whenever you say education, people always cringe.
10 comments:
This is a very extreme version of the differences, but definately makes the point that I agree with. The problem with education (as a whole) is that it is developing testers, etc., not learners. Your perspective of learning in life is very true of many people, but there are also many people who never come to love learning and are not the curious people who ask questions, etc. We need a system that develops these life-long learners who are able to research online, ask friends, be curious and come to understand many basic concepts which are being taught in school through testing and grades.
Thanks for the reminder about the struggles in learning at school.
LOL - yeah, I actually agree, but like you've noticed, I wanted to make the stark contrast... you know me, always trying to provoke something...;)
But with note about learning and asking questions, I think everyone loves learning and asking questions, it's just a matter of not they are asking about things and learning about things that "people" think are important. I mean, just by living, you have to learn the mechanics of opening a door without slamming it in your own face as you walk out, or learning to address your neighbour or learning how to deal with the bank manager or how to buy things - each of those have "good" and "bad" ways of being learnt and could theoretically be assessed...
Hey Bro, check out my blog ...its pretty crap right now prob coz my brain isn't exactly thinking about normal stuff ... but heres the link:
http://blogtiff88.blogspot.com
And reply to my TWO posts!!!
Thanks nig, good luck for your exams =)
So... I'm reading my RSS feed of blogs on Bloglines and I get to 2centsworth, when... http://davidwarlick.com/2cents/2005/11/01/why-do-we-have-to-learn-how-to-blog/ There you are!! Crazy, I'm amazed by your entrance into this blog world. You express yourself so well. I'm jealous! If only I had time to be online more and compete with you :)
As to the learning discussion, I agree everyone has an inact love for learning it and depends on the topic at times, but I also think people shut themselves off to learning and curiousity when they have bad experiences with school. Sometimes it's very hard to get through to these people who have learned to live their lives in a very different world that does not require the ability to read and appropriate converstations at work... atleast that some of the experiences I've been getting with high school drop-outs.
That's true and I would consider your comments more valid than my "idealistic assumptions" due to your occupation and experiences!!! But yeah, you raise a good point that school can "scare" people away from learning. It's like what Carl Wieman said about first year undergraduate courses pushing students more towards the novice side of the novice---expert continuum. Sad, but true. :)
LOL, I am an incessant blogger, I cannot help it. I am grateful that someone as "important" as David Warlick would respond to me though. I mean, I didn't expect it. However, ever since I mentioned that I had met him at NECC and that I am a student, I have stopped getting feedback? I don't want to read anything into that, it can just be the natural course of the discussion, but oh well. I have tried commenting on other blogs and I rarely get a response. I suppose my language is different or something. But like i said, I don't want to be hypersensitive about it.
I have read some posts about blogging lately (http://www.weblogg-ed.com/2005/11/01#a4179 ... see the comments as well as post itself) - what is blogging and what isn't and at first I was sad that my blog wasn't "real"...but then on reflection, it has grown somewhat - it started off as a journal, but now it is deeper than that. I won't go as far as saying that blogs have a strict definition, but I would say that it is in their uniqueness and relevance to the user and their surroundings (slowly expanding it in digestable amounts, mostly at their own pace - you choose what you read - and sometimes with surprises - commenting, random visitors) that make it worthwhile.
Hi Cherrie,
You might enjoy reading some of Colin Lankshear and Michelle Knobel's work. http://www.geocities.com/c.lankshear/work.html. A particularly good article for you is "Planning pedagogy for i-mode: from flogging to blogging via wifi". I think you'd find it very interesting!!
Hey - thanks for the link... I've gone through about half of that paper (it IS mighty long... I've just started the part about blogging...) but I will have to finish another day because it IS exam period, so I should always be doing one of three things: studying, eating or sleeping. =)
But that paper has made me feel better about my slackness in replying to emails... they are just not as handy or easy as text messages or instant messages. Plus, with an email the recipient is more likely to keep it to throw back in your face - so it's more formal and you have to be careful with what you say.
Hahah, those girls say "like" a lot, even though they're at Uni...
Hmm, i don't wanna say too much, but if you read an interview transcript from any young person today, you'd be surprised how many "likes" you'd find...even from very smart girls who are at Uni!!!
:P
Good luck with the exams!
Like, it's so annoying! How, can we, like, stop ourselves?
P.S. I did OK! In the exams! Thanks for the luck! :)
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