I am listening to a Great Course called "Customs of the World" given by David Livermore. He talks of the need to "interact" with his material. He says I should discuss what he says with others, in conversation, by email, by making dioramas or acting out skits. There are multiple ways to use, question, and explore his statements and their implications and any and all of them may help me keep his talks in my memory and my mind. Working with what he says will improve my grasp of it and maybe give me a bit of sensitivity. There are many ways to interact with the material, depending on its nature and the tools I have to work with, from speaking to shooting a video.
Good educators have long realized that hearing a message or reading it is not the end of learning it.
Sometimes, the well-known 'taxonomy of learning objectives", created under the chairmanship of Benjamin Bloom, is used to emphasize that there are other steps to learning beyond memorization or other forms of basic ingestion.
Knowledge - what did he say?
Comprehension - what does that mean?
Application - how can the message be used? What good is it? Why are we hearing this?
Analysis - can you see where the message applies in this activity?
Synthesis - can you construct an activity that uses today's message?
Evaluation - what good was today's message? What are its limitation? When does it apply?
Some people today talk of the "flipped classroom". The term refers to assigning basic learning (listening, reading) as homework, to be done outside the classroom. Then, the classroom can be used for groupwork, projects, discussions, live activities to make the material more completely grasped, embedded, sifted, digested. In today's world, we might have a classroom of young and older adults learning and engaging in making the lessons more completely part of their thinking and understanding, while at the same time, being open to being called away by their employer or their families or the campus authority's warning of a riot or crime just outside. Many older educators want all phones down and no one speaking except themselves. At times, such suppression can result in considerably lower levels of learning and enthusiasm. It can take a little getting used to not a three ring circus but a ten ring show but such high levels of activity can pay off very handsomely.
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Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety
