Teaching and Learning Methods
This graphic shows the self-navigational or guided navigational process developed by John Seely Brown (2000). and incorporates the Model of Learning developed by Danish psychologist Knud Illeris developed in 1995 (Richardson, 2002). Illeris says people learn in four different ways: studying, receiving instruction (teaching), working on projects and doing exercises.
Along with the learning processes, we need to study and understand many relationships between, student and teacher, teaching and learning methods, the mediate and non-mediate environments, our tools (low and high technology).
At times self-navigation can be challenging, especially for a young person. The word 'homework', is one that always seems to up everyone's stress. At home always seeing my daughter immersed in a computer, made me ask the question, 'is this a good thing'? Not knowing what she is working on, the challenges she may be having (if any), left me always guessing.... how can I help, or do I need to. Changing the relationship we both have with homework was something I felt would be a good one. The words teamwork, openness, fun, flexible, and many more kept coming to mind. Removing the concept of 'boundaries' seemed to be a good one.
Making low technology a priority
The challenge my daughter gave me, was to provide her with a borderless platform where she would want to loose the laptop and it's pressures, allow her to explore, play, as well as study at the same time.
Turning the surface of the largest wall in her bedroom into a writable one was our answer to the platform challenge. Draw, do homework, celebrate, discuss, it all started to happen in her space (her place of true comfort). This very simple step changed when and how we tackled not only homework but many other things. We found looking at the relationships between homework and the learning process, the mediate and non-mediate environments and low and high technology at basic levels transformed her bedroom into many rooms. This was her experiential environment.
ps We still need low technology..... :-)