Learning By Doing

Friday, June 5, 2009 by jethrojones

These thoughts are in response to Darren Draper's post at the Tech and Learning Blog.

I served a mission for my church in Russia for two years. Before I got there I studied the language for at least 8 hours each day for seven weeks. You can imagine how well I thought I spoke when I left for Russia. When I got there, I realzed that I spoke horribly. However, after about six months in the mothellrland, speaking russian as much as possible, I could take care of myself pretty well. After finishing my two years, I arrived. I could tell jokes in Russian. I could make plays on words. I was able to do this because I spoke the language. I learned by doing something.

In schools many teachers expect students to learn by sitting and getting.

There is one place that can and should be a place at schools that students can learn by doing: the library.

The library could be renamed the learning by doing lab. If students want to learn about something, they should be able to do it in the library.

The media specialists who work in the library would be leaders of controlled chaos. They are there to help the students learn by doing. When they do that, the students will be in charge of their learning and the media specialists would be their guides.

Perhaps the best thing about the library is that they don't have a class or a curriculum that they must follow like teachers do. They can reach out to every curriculum and every class at the school. They can provide the tools for those curriculums to help the students learn by doing.

The media specialist should have a working knowledge of all the curriculums in the school so she can be a resource to help teachers.

Have a Good Life.

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