Learning to Learn: For the Learners’ Sake!
July 2012
As the end of my master’s degree program draws closer, it is time to take stock in what has been accomplished and what remains undone. It is time to identify lessons learned and then formulate plans to utilize this information. It is not so much as an ending as it is a checkpoint and a chance to refocus my thoughts and goals for the near and not-so-near future.
I want the bulk of this essay to focus on my future thoughts and plans, so I will keep my comments on the past brief. First of all, my skills, confidence, and knowledge of education and the technology available have vastly grown over the last two(plus) years. I now have a better appreciation that merely having technology does not automatically make a lesson better or immediately engages young students. There has to be a plan and a purpose behind the choices made and the
technology has to make sense for a given lesson and for the specific students. I have learned that so much technology exists today that a massive amount of thought, research, and evaluation is required just to figure out what it is you want to invest the time and effort to master in order to use in a classroom. One last major idea that I now understand is that you are never done. You are never done learning. You are never done with your work to improve a lesson or course or department. You are never done investigating, exploring, testing, or sampling new methods and technology. Teaching
is much like navigating an unknown river. The direction of travel is obvious, but you are constantly making course
adjustments and every so often have to make a major decision that you hope keeps you advancing towards your goal.
Now, what to do with all of this insight? Since I know that I will have a need to be constantly learning, I have and will continue to maintain resources. Resources come in many forms and they can help save time, energy, and, all kidding aside, your sanity. Chat rooms, YouTube, tutorials, professional development, other professionals, and the colleague down the hall can all be the right resource in a given situation. Great resources will allow me to streamline existing endeavors because I can ask questions and get intelligence responses. I can bounce ideas or discover new ones in which to try in a classroom.
I can get over a troublesome hurdle without driving myself crazy in the process and thus diminishing all of my enthusiasm.
Without enthusiasm, most new ideas die early deaths.
My next order of business is to apply what I have learned. I do not plan to continue any formal education in the foreseeable future, but I do plan to be busy learning. My district is making changes to follow the Core Curriculum which, for high school math, means that we will be developing several rich learning activities throughout the year that we simply did not have time for in the past. I view this as a great opportunity to infuse technology into the classroom! I do not want to
bite off more than I can chew and overwhelm myself, so I will look at one activity per semester. Over time I will add activities where none exist and improve upon the ones that do. I have in mind something online that could be included in a student’s e-portfolio. Similar to what I saw in CEP 813, I would love to have a gallery of work done by my students that I could display via a website year after year.
There are many ways that I will continue to learn. I will experiment with new ideas and different technology and note the results. I will keep open dialogue with other teachers that have like-minded goals. Sometimes just verbalizing an idea or a problem can reduce its complexity to the point that it can be handled easily (or discarded). I will keep my eyes open for interesting seminars or webinars. I will keep an open mind to new technology as well as tried-and-true methods that are new to me. I will listen to my students! Many are very interested in ways to learn more quickly and in more interesting ways. Lastly, I will keep the countless number of online resources mentioned above at my fingertips.
So, as I will soon leave the ranks of formal education, I understand what lies before me. I have learned how to learn in today’s world. My education is not complete, but it is formidable. It will enable me to achieve goals that were not previously within reach. I am excited, and I embrace the challenge!
-Dave Crispin