Self –Directed Learners
In my experience, students
in school are often reluctant to find solutions and work out problems for
themselves. I believe this is because
they fear they will not get the “right’ answer and are afraid of being “wrong.”
However, what I noticed in the multimodal, informal learning that the Appalachian students we interviewed are
partaking in at home is that these same children are very much self-directed
learners while outside of school. For
instance, in Johanna Carr’s interview, her student, when asks how she learned
her favorite computer activity, stated, “I just figured it out, it wasn’t hard.” Abigail Hayhurst’s interviewee suggested the
same thing, when she replied, “I taught myself by
just playing around with it.” My
own interviewee also taught herself about video blogging after stumbling across
this technology.
When these students hit
a roadblock and need assistance, they take initiative and are able to seek out
and find resources to assist them. During her interview, Sarah Cline found that
her young person will ask a friend if she still can’t “figure it out.” In the case of Sarah William’s study, her
interviewee’s older cousin showed him how to play his favorite game Minecraft.
Currently, most of the
students interviewed do not use technology in school to master critical
thinking and initiative skills. Instead,
their teachers ask them to regurgitate information in the form of tests and
research. However, students who use multimodal
technologies at home are developing project initiative and self-direction, both
skills necessary in the 21st century workplace. If teachers use technology to focus on the
process of learning as well as the outcome, we could better prepare our students
for the demands of our global economy.
No comments:
Post a Comment