Change the Learning or the Environment?

With all of the tools that we have at our disposal, I am faced with several questions today.

As the debates rage around the edu - blogosphere over one question or another I wonder: is it learning that we want to change, or is it the places that learning happens in (classrooms) that we want to change?

Most people have had powerful learning experiences during their lives; but unfortunately, for many people this happens outside of schools and classrooms.  Certainly, in the light of what we know about flat world learning needs and ideas of connectivism and networked structures of learning, we have different goals for learners and we want learning to "look different" from the past. But I think that given the right motivation and the right topics, the grand majority of people have little trouble learning.

But schools and classrooms are not structured to best support that learning. We need to understand how learning happens, but mostly we need to deeply re - examine the environments we create in classrooms and begin there.

3 basic questions for classrooms:

1.) How do kids learn best?

2.) What are we teaching them?

3.) How can we structure a learning environment in the most effective ways to support #'s 1 and 2? 

technorati tags: learning, classrooms

Comments

[Bronwyn G]

Kids learn best from being free to do and explore their environment.

Teachers teach them to think and to control their feelings and how to communicate and express themselves.

We can structure classrooms so they can be more like the flat classroom. We can give people the right topics so that they can use their motivation.