Bruce's+Page

"How People Learn" Response

People construct new knowledge and understandings based on what they already know & believe. The diverseness of this statement is crazy, yet I know that for myself this is way that I make sense of my own world. Is there some baseline of knowledge or beliefs that is required befor one is able to learn? Or is there one learning method that is predoninantly more prevelent among learners?

We know that Learning with understanding is good and its been difficult to study from the scientific perspective. Students often have limited opportunities to understand or make sense of topics because of the way in which curricula emphasizes memory rather than understanding.

Vygotsky & Socio-Constructivism

One thing that I did know about was the zone of prozimal development - which is students can do something with help but they cna't do it alone.

One that was new to me was that Vygosky's theories have been hugely influential on successful early - literacy programs like Reading Reconvery.

One question: Isn't there a place for teacher or even student or even student driven learning models in the classrooms?

Where does knowledge live and or reside? I think this is one of those questions, what came first, the chicken or the egg? Knowledge, I think resides with and in people. The same peice of knowlege can be given different meaning depending on the context. Therefore if that person dies, and the knowledge has not been passed on, it dies with the person. To finish the loop, knowledge is created by people as things etc. become known. Meaning is given as stuff is put into context. And therefore the cycle contiues.

What does it mean to know something? I think that if one knows something one has been able to give meaning to a piece of knowledge within a context and therefore is able to pass that piece of knowledge along to another who in turn makes their own meaning within their own context.

Do have knowledge because you "know something or because you know how to access it or ... build from it or... I think in recent times there has been a shift of sorts. The ease to which information is now accessible allows people to look up that which is needed very quickly to satisfy the need that exists for them at that moment. I think there is still a foundational amount of information that is needed to have some sort of basis for basic life skills. After that one could potentially access that which is needed to make meaning for their situation. Thus, be building on the meaningful information piece by piece for their own context. It could be a crazy way of learning the "knowing" part of stuff. But, potentially one way of building knowledge for oneself.