1/25/11

Readings:
Flickr - Great Quotes about Learning and Change
The New Literacy
Pew Internet and American Life Project

• How do people learn in the real world, outside of school?
• How do people learn from and through technology in the real world?
• What are the implications of that for what teaching and learning could/should look like?

Learning is continuous, but school is not. That means the majority of the learning takes place outside of school in the real world. While this learning might not be defined by a curriculum, it is still learning. When you're an infant, you aren't necessarily taught to read and write (exclude those "My Baby Can Read" programs) like you are early on in school, but that doesn't mean you're not learning. You learn how to walk and talk just by being around others. You also learn from your environment. If you touch something that you've never seen before, say a pin, and it hurts when you touch the point, you learn not to touch it. Essentially, you learn the fundamentals of being a person outside of school in the real world.

A major component in learning outside of school is through technology. Television, for example, is utilized by people of all ages to learn. If you're a child, you can watch educational children shows. If you're an adult, you can watch the news and learn about what events occurred recently. You can even watch normal TV shows. I knew nothing about crime scene investigations until I watched CSI. Even though a lot of it is outrageous and unrealistic, I still have a better understanding of that than I did before I watched the show. When I watched it though, I didn't realize I was learning. This leads to how I feel people learn from technology in the real world. People learn best from and through technology in the real world without even realizing that they're learning.

I can't begin to describe how many times I've randomly come across something online that I found interesting. Because I was interested in it, I didn't realize that I was learning anything from it. It could be from something as silly as someone's Facebook status. Someone could post a quick thing about what's going on in their life. By reading that, you learned what is going on with them but without realizing you learned it. While it's not in a school's curriculum to learn what so-and-so did, that doesn't mean you didn't learn.

Another example is just by watching sports on TV. Even if you've never played it, you can learn how to play the game just by observing it. Now we even have DVR which allows you to rewind. So you never have to miss anything. You can show a replay and get a better understanding of what happened during a certain play. You could even being watching a sport played in another country, but not even yours. This type of information would not be available without technology.

While reading Clive Thompson on the New Literacy, I found it interesting (but not surprising) that students learned how to write for a specific audience by using technology to communicate with one another, but they were still able to use correct prose for academic work. Obviously, students did not think that when they were texting their friend, blogging or posting a status update would teach them how to address certain audiences. Again, they learned by doing something they were interesting in, but without realizing they learned at all. This is something that is difficult to learn, but many did learn outside of the classroom.

Technology has allowed us to encounter a wide range of information that we may never have come across without it. Technology has also provided us with more ways for entertainment. Naturally, technology has allowed us to combine entertainment with learning.

Since technology plays such a crucial role in our lives and provides us with more interesting ways to learn, it makes classrooms without technology seem boring. Students who not engaged will not learn as well as students who are engaged. Using technology is a way to keep students engaged. This means that all classrooms should incorporate technology if possible to promote learning. This could be just simply show a documentary on the TV, or using PowerPoints to teach your lessons. Technology also allows students to be in control of their own learning. Teachers could give the students the opportunity to do their own research online about a subject and share it with the class. Students would control what websites they decided to visit to find that information and can easily exit out of ones they find uninteresting. They decide what they want to read about it.

While reading the inspirational quotes on Flickr, I came across a quote from Albert Einstein saying "Insanity: Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." I feel that this describes our school system completely. We teach the same things over and over again in the same ways, but get frustrated when students who are failing continue to fail. Even worse, we don't understand why they continue to fail. That's definitely insane. Utilizing some technology in the classroom can eliminate doing the same thing over and over again and can yield different results.

One statistic from Pew Internet and the American Life Project stated that "68% of all Americans (internet users and non-users alike) said the internet has had a major impact on the ability of groups to communicate with members. Some 75% of internet users said that." I believe this statistic reiterates even further that technology can be beneficial to a classroom. Instead of a group communicating with members, it could be a teacher communicating with students. Sometimes standing in front of a room and speaking isn't enough. By delivering information on the internet, it allows all students to take the time they need to comprehend it and it serves as a review for students to go back to.