Learning How to Learn

How do I best learn?

I learn from experience and my peers. I like to think I keep all of the concepts I have mastered as tools and when life requests me to think, I grab a tool from my box. I believe I have learned all of most important life lessons such as morals and values from other individuals. These skills were not taught to me by book or website. It is important to strive for human interaction because it helps as grow as humans. When I am remembering something in my mind, I can hear a person saying the words; my mind doesn't remember words in a book.

Technology is introducing itself into the classroom in more ways than ever with more and more schools having the right capabilities. With this turn, classrooms have introduced a concept of flipped learning. In short, flipped learning is the concept of students coming to class prepared before the lesson is taught in the physical classroom. The students are learning the lesson from a web-based program that gives them the opportunity to have a virtual lesson.

Pros of a virtual lesson:

• Students can pause and rewind if a certain topic is difficult

• The student can learn at the best time for them. They have autonomy in a manner that they are on their own schedule and are able to choose when to start and finish the lessons

• The same lesson will be repeated identically from classroom to classroom. All students will be on the same playing ground and receive the same educational lesson

Cons of a virtual lessons:

• It is internet based. If the student has any type of connection issue, he or she will not get the full education he or she could have gotten from an actual teacher

• If a student has a question during the lesson, it is harder to get an answer at the drop of a hat

• A child might not have a quiet environment at home to learn in the best possible way

Do I support Flipped Learning? 

I do not. I believe a child should have the freedom to do what they want in their own free time. If a student's home life is too school-centered, he or she will not have the opportunity to explore and grow with the outside world. The child is already attending school M-F. The time used in class should be used to introduce educational lessons. When a child goes home for the day, he or she should have the chance to unwind and maybe think freely about what they learned that day. Teachers should teach students. A web-program should not teach students. The first thing that comes to my mind is computers coming to life and there would be a tech-apocalypse (little dramatic).