Learning is a personal experience

hat did you learn in school, today, dear?"


"Nothing!" replies a young child to hir parent upon returning home from school.

Is this true? Are we the only parents who have heard this reply to our query? Certainly they learned something we figure. They just don't know it. Or maybe they don't remember. It wasn't a memorable day at school.

There is another scenario which happens where the child does something that amazes hir parents and upon being asked where she learned that, she says school. Then the parents beam.

These two scenarios illustrate just how personal learning is. The first scenario speaks to the fact that we can't say what we learned, but in the second scenario we can show what we learned by using that knowledge. Learning is subjective, internal, personal; it is not objective or delivered.

School has been made the place of learning, but is it? Should learning be relegated to schools alone? Should schools only be in the business of learning? And what is learning anyway?

Learning is a personal matter. It has broader ramifications, but it is personal. What we choose to learn and why is such a personal matter. Sure we study something to pass a driver's test, but obviously forget it as soon as we get behind the wheel of the car. Students enter a class and tolerate threats and ultimatums, just to get by and to get to the next class or grade. As we reflect on our own K-12 learning, we are hard pressed to remember those things that were so important at the time. We don't believe there are too many people who could be too specific about a lot of what they learned in school. Sure there are those isolated moments of epiphany we recall. We remember the teacher, the moment, the weather, everything about it. But there are so few memories. Learning should be memorable. What makes learning memorable?

	The male student at the top looking at you was the one quoted by NYTimes reporter.

A clue may come from one of Ted's students to a New York Times reporter, when he speaks of being allowed to think about a question before having to answer it. We all work out problems in different ways, DIVERSE ways. We need time to reflect, collaborate, play with the idea. Then we kneed it, edit it, recast it. This manipulation of an idea takes time and is done in a personal way. This personal development has to be nurtured, massaged, and guided by the teacher and done by the learner. We believe that the use of technology can not only facilitate it's growth but also enhance it.

One of Lori's students, Syed Reza, got off to a slow start in terms of writing about the text the class was reading, but put his time and energy into adding links to his poetry and an essay about his favorite teacher. Another student, Rakesh Budhu, has added links to the school organizations that he participates in, an online journal that he keeps, and information about the library where he works. Hasan Bagwadeen, normally a shy student, has found many ways of expressing himself via his webpage. "Many of you people think I am a shy, quiet person...you are wrong," Hasan writes. His technical experise has made him one of the more popular students in his class.

We see the common denominator in our observations of memorable learning experiences occur in the actual doing of something by the learner, active engagement, not passive listening. Technology allows every learner the capability of learning and learning in hir own way and at hir own speed. Seems as if the students are playing too much, observe critics of the use technology in schools. But play is crucial in the dynamics of learning. We play with an idea, toy with a notion, wrestle with a thought. Play is good, that is when we really learn, when we play around with it for a while. Well, there is good news about all this play: "After years of unprecendented spending in school technology, investers are now looking for results. 'Does technology make a difference?' Yes. Researchers at SRI International have found educational results..." begins this 156 page report. Learning happens when learners are engaged and doing and technology facilitates learning.

What makes that moment stand out? Why do we remember such moments in our education? We remember because they are those times in our lives when our learning became personal. We had some place in our databases to stick that information, to process it, to connect it to other relevant knowledge. We refer to this theory of placing new information in appropriate niches as the "Velcro Theory."

The common practice in some classes and for some teachers is to have the students work on the same assignment and to have the class move along at the same pace. This is of course a classic "bell curve" model. By that we mean that those students who could and want to move on, can't because they have to wait. Those who can't keep up or don't get it are absent, lose heart, fall even further behind, drop out, or become discipline problems. However, the students in the middle are the ones to which teacher spends the most time and gives the most attention. The bell curve. Teaching to the middle makes learning very impersonal. Trying to break this uniform approach to learning has resulted in group work, but this method, too, provides little advancement in learning. Our approach allows students to work at their own pace.

Take a look at a student in Lori's Class, Giray Suli. Giray is a struggling learner in the same class as Vanessa Roldan, a very successful student. How can a teacher be expected to provide successful learning experiences for students with such varied abilities? All of our students have homepages, and a sense of accomplishment that they derive from having their work published on the web. Their individual struggles and successes can be dealt with on an individual basis rather than affecting the entire class.

Teaching is personal. Consider the fact that the teacher is one of the major professions in which the practitioner is alone. Most teachers are alone in their room with an average of 30 students. Doctors, lawyers, politicians, athletes do not work alone, like teachers. That makes the act of teaching very personal. Not only does the Internet connect teachers to teachers, but it also lets the teacher personalize hir instruction. The Internet provides greater access to sources for the teacher, so s/he can provide links to preselected sites that contain information needed for the lesson. Having the capability of accessing an entire play or novel online, the teacher doesn't have to worry about having enough books, having one for every student, having one at home. Online literature can be bookmarked, can be accessed by the student in any place connected to the net. This instant access and the amount of information available, makes the Internet a valuable tool for the cyber teacher. We can't remember the number of times colleagues have come to our cyber rooms to access a piece of literature not found in any book in our book room or school library. This kind of access gives the teacher a great deal of power and the capability of a customized course of study.

Students hard at work in Lori's class.

Personal learning will occur when each student becomes responsible for the construction of hir own webfolio. The webfolio is important for each student because it can show a body of work, it can show progress through archiving features, and can be evaluated upon performance by many people. We see what they are DOING. This would also be true of students. As we allow them to learn on their terms and in their way, they discover that learning is personal and then they learn. This is not chaotic nor is it a free for all. For example from a collection of classic short story links, the students will select a short story to read and to create a multimedia webpage. The same holds true for all the genre we teach, like book reviews. Since learning is interactive, allowing for choice from a selected collection gives both teacher and student needed power to engage in the learning process. This is what we mean by making their learning personal. Again we are tapping into the paradox of chaos and order. We provide some order by giving lists for choices and then the chaos occurs in the process of making a choice and then order is restored when the student creates the web product in hir webfolio.

Robert L. Fried suggests a more passionate approach of engagement in his The Passionate Teacher. He stresses engagement as key to student learning and teacher passion as the fuel to ignite the engagement. "As adults working with young people, our passions are key to their engagement." (Fried, p1) Part of the passion of engagement is in the act of discovery as so many of his stories illustrate. He further states: "It[a passionate teacher] is, I believe, a blending of three elements - respect, collaboration, and a sense of the work's importance and connection to the world outside school - that combined in mutually reinforcing ways and enable teachers to sustain such a climate and culture." (Fried, p.42) Wise words as they help explain the POWER of the cyber classroom. Students are engaged in their own learning by constructing their work. They collaborate with those in the classroom for assistance and peer review. They are connected to the outside world via their web page. This connection provides access to telementors, peer review. It allows employers and others to make more effective assessments of each student for employment or for further academic advancements in life as Fried further explains.

On a more pedagogical point, let us address the notion of learning retention as shown in the following chart:

What this chart screams out to us is that learning is interactive and that is what makes learning a personal experience. We must interact with information, manipulate it, play with it, mold it for us, and stick it where it belongs as we apply the velcro theory to our own personal learning. Only then will learning regain its SCHOLARSHIP status again.

In The Passionate Teacher, Robert L. Fried talks about "The Game of School," as "a complex pattern of habits, avoidances, and defenses that creates an atmosphere in which serious learning falls victim to the drive by everyone to get through the day, the week, the year with as little hassle as possible." When Fried asked a group of teachers what it would look like if the game were changed, they responded with the following:

1- Kids coming into class prepared to work;
2- Kids attentive and enjoying learning;
3- Kids asking good questions, being thoughtfully engaged;
4- Kids helping each other and respecting one another;
5- Kids feeling good about themselves and proud of their accomplishments,