Thursday, September 30, 2010

Learning Theory



I really enjoyed what Bill Kerr states in his blog regarding the _isms is that "these _isms do not stand still.  They evolve, ..."  I couldn't agree with him more, because look at the direction education is heading in.  Granted I feel we are moving at a much slower pace than we should actually be moving at, at least we are incorporating real life technology to further enhance education.  We are moving away from the understanding of "how" a student learns, or "how" we as educators need to instruct.  Our philosophy on teaching is constantly evolving too, and that with the help of trial and error- seeing what we do in our class and how the students respond.  We are fortunate enough to evolve with our students, and those who do not evolve with their students, definitely get left behind.  Just as Karl Kapp states so eloquently in his blog: "The issue many forget is that “learning” is not one thing…it is a multi-layered word that tends to get treated as if it were just one thing…and it’s not. It is multi-facetted and that is why developing new models for “learning” is so difficult…there are too many levels for one school of thought or one model to do it all."

So in order for us to teach and learn and teach and learn, we need to constantly evolve by educating ourselves and staying with the trends our students are in.  If we cannot relate to them or use what they use every day, we are not going to succeed in educating them or get through to them.

2 comments:

  1. You are absolutly right. We have to meet the students where they are. With everything going digital, education needs to begin moving that way also. Today's learners require a different skill set when embark on their future endevors. Even a cashier has to have skills to use a much mre complicated register than even 10 years ago.
    Educators do not usually enjoy change once they have found thier personal "groove" however change is necessary to grow and become a better educator. I so agree that we need to keep up to date with the new ways students communicate and learn to me the best we can be.

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  2. If we as educators keep on changing ourselves and move with the times, it would make for having a continuous supply of excellent educators in the system.

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