Learning from mistakes

 by Olga LaPlante

Well, this is not an earth-shattering statement, although in the view of the current education policies and trends it might as well be.
This teacher doesn't say anything new, but why aren't more teachers embracing this idea and this approach? Granted, ditching your traditional views is difficult – and I am all for being careful about it too. Sifting through the methods and techniques will take time. But as I said, there is nothing earth-shattering in this story. It's just told well.
We all know – teachers or not – that this is how we learn, by doing. Yet, when you walk into a classroom, it often just flips the switch – and you often feel that half the time it's the learners who have already grown accustomed to a particular – lecture-type – style of doing school. So, you have to fight with them – sometimes – to have them start learning the way they are designed to learn. What's up with that?

Important Things to Learn

Back in 2006, Stephen Downes wrote a post here and here that spoke to what was essential for everyone to learn. Today I just happened upon it again, and it sparked some more thinking about his suggestions. Here are Stephen's essentials linked to some resource pages here at LIM:

1. How to Predict Consequences
2. How to Read
3. How to Distinguish between Truth and Fiction
4. How to Empathize
5. How to be Creative
6. How to Communicate Clearly
7. How to Learn
8. How to Stay Healthy
9 How to Value Yourself
10. How to Live Meaningfully

Learning People

"The central task of education is to implant a will and a facility for learning; it should produce not learned but learning people. The truly human society is a learning society, where grandparents, parents, and children are students together.

In a time of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists." ~Eric Hoffer