Meaningful Learning

Bain: “While others may be satisfied if students perform well on the examinations, the best teachers assume that learning has little meaning unless it produces a sustained and substantial influence on the way people think, act, and feel.”

Good to know I’m making a correct assumption.  SO much of what I’m seeing feeds into a Constructivist approach to learning, and I can’t wait ’til I have time to dig into the Learning Theories classes in grad school!

For me, some of the most powerful changes to my thinking (“sustained and substantial?”) came during my time at the New Media Center at VPI.  That job was problem-solving non-stop, tech troubleshooting, and one of best takeaways from that experience was that it’s okay, and often preferred, to “Google it” for an answer.  That’s not cheating.  That’s not giving up.  That’s fundamental to the utility of the internet.

~mrc