Who would choose to blog about learning, and is it even a topic?
Well I am going to find out the answer to that question by making learning, or the activity of learning, the subject of this blog. Rather than choose a specific interest such as photography or Web design, I decided to blog about that personal aspect that is always engaged in the pursuit of knowledge - the learning self.
The need to know more and the need to be able to adapt to changing situations is an aspect of self that directly affects our quality of life. I decided that this blog might give me the chance to step back from the specifics of my study at Curtin University, and provide an opportunity to observe and recollect some of the places and some of the ways that I have observed the process of learning.
Hopefully some of my reflections will include humor, and everybody knows that learning can certainly include that ingredient. Just bring to mind a time where you have seen young children adapt their behavior in response to a new or challenging situation, like who is it that gets to eat the last piece of cake at a party.
People develop in different ways, but it is guaranteed that nobody can get through life without developing skills along the way. Because my current learning is slightly serious and structured, I hope that this blog might give me a bit of respite, as I consider some of the entertaining and spontaneous situations where I have seen, or experienced learning first hand.
Of course "learning" is a topic. I am fascinated in learning. You might enjoy my blog http://kylieportfolio.wordpress.com/ which is not the blog I'm concentrating on for this unit and not one I have updated recently but I love to record my learning journey here.
ReplyDeleteI totally agree Kylie. I really just made the title of my post into a question to make the subject a bit more engaging. I looked at your blog and you have piles of interesting material there. My blog will tend to be a bit more observational, probably 'lite' on the instructive...
ReplyDeleteI will be following up some of your listed resources though. Cheers.
Do you really think that learning is unavoidable? I know far too many people who continually make the same choices, and therefore have the same outcome. I wonder if they will ever learn to try a new path, a new option and different choices.
ReplyDeleteI think I'd like to think that learning is not an option, but society has shown me time and again, that I think learning really is a choice.
I know what you mean December, people do seem to run at things the same way constantly, and levels of literacy required by schools, or at least the level of engagement with language in the current generation can seem disappointing. I think that learning is unavoidable though in the sense that it seems to be an organic human activity. From the outset we learn. We learn language, and we learn social skills. However when it comes to staying switched on so that we personally feel compelled to expand our repertoire, then that increasingly comes down to personality and social factors that generally seem to slow our expansion. Obviously this varies from person to person.
ReplyDeleteBut people are constrained by certain limitations, available food, nurture etc. So that if you have a PhD in physics, you’d still start with the basics of securing food and shelter if those things were threatened. And so the impact of a few bright people is massively constrained by a severely limiting society or geography. And for these reasons, and for the reason that learning, like most human activity, is massively complicated, I’m not even going to attempt to explain it, not qualified to do that anyway.
In my blog I just plan to paint a few pictures of moments that I recall, or recall observing. But bring on the comments … it’s a broad subject.