I am excited to start a new course. I prefer learning and thinking about ideas and theories in Education Technology over applications and tools, so am looking forward to learning in this course. Applying tools may be more practical for my everyday job, however I prefer learning as thinking instead of doing. Learning should be a continual process. Sometimes students just want to get an answer or complete the assignment without reflecting on their process or what they learned. This type of reflection is a piece of assessment I need to work on as a teacher.
Knowledge is all that I gain through my learning. It is what I can take back from my learning to apply to my experiences, whether it is a skill, a thought, or a feeling. Knowledge can be theoretical or practical. I need knowledge to form an opinion or place a value on something. Knowledge is what allows me to assign meaning to something. A lack of knowledge of something without having the means to obtain it or the access to resources to learn about it can feel frustrating. I am thinking of the frustration I feel lately about my lack of knowledge of the complex situation in the Middle East. How or where can I learn more about a complex issue to feel I have enough knowledge to form an opinion or even understand a situation? And what if there is knowledge about a topic that I don't have access to? Valuing the importance of open access to information so knowledge can be obtained freely is one of the reasons I wanted to become a librarian. Intellectual freedom is so important to knowledge.
Nice start Stephanie,
ReplyDeleteI'm glad you have highlighted your preference for learning through ideas rather than action. So many prefer to gain ideas or ask questions after doing. You may need to poke at me about this so that I can meet your needs. Or we may both need to poke at others about expressing ideas. :)
You say a lot in these few sentences. I look forward to exploring together learning theory and our ideas about accessing, filtering, evaluating and contributing knowledge on the internet.
It’s so interesting to read your perspective on learning, especially since for me it is more difficult to learn without the subject in my hands or the experience within reach.
ReplyDeleteI can relate to feeling frustrated when knowledge of a subject is difficult to obtain, or when there is a lot of information but you are not sure how much of it is true or if there is more to it than has been publicly released.