The Learning Exchange: An Internet-centric learning center
( for those that want to understand forgetting)
The Learning Center is a place where you can come to have fun
learning. My hypothesis is that, at any one time, each of us has a
limited amout of available mental energy that is partitioned
between remembering, learning, thinking and doing. Mental
energy expended on remembering and web-site navigation is not
available for thinking, learning and problem-solving. Google and the global
connectivity provided by the Internet give us the option of
efficiently locating good stuff and sparing us the
agony of chasing URLs or having to remember exotic URLs. In other words
Google and the Internet can be used as extensions of our memory.
If you are having fun then often your
your available learning energy is amplified, thereby prolonging the time to
boredom. The idea in these pages is to use images to ignite
curiosity in order to release latent learning energy. Gene Stead
and I have speculated about restoring
the joy in learning for our grandchildren. Take a look at some powerpoint presentations available from
other internet sites
Learning is all about building understanding and construction of
our understanding begins with scaffolding. I believe we can build
scaffolding from sensations from each of our 4 senses: visual,
sound, touch, smell, taste - We use sensations to link facts,
concepts and experiences together. Scaffolding is just what it
says, the framework for understanding or the framework for building
new insights or the framework for pursuing new knowledge. Josh and
I have started building a set of notes
that address scaffolding in our area of science.
This collection of resources is all about learning. I like
photography and travel. I have accumulated a lot of "stuff" and am
getting bored with making photo essays about the places that I have
been. Recently, my guys in the IT Lab helped me repackage some
spider photos. As part of this, Brian created a page called "For
the curious". I liked the idea of grabbing a young person's
attention with an interesting photo and then letting curiosity
about the photo guide the curious down a path toward interesting
science.
My approach is to use my travels and photos as a way to identify
potentially interesting learning opportunities. The photos
represent visual scaffolding, a frame of reference for learning.
Examples include my story of Natasha, the spider, Igor, the
grasshopper, bioluminescence seen in the waves on the beach near
Muscat Oman etc.
My goal is to restore a little of the fun of learning by weaving
a carpet that links photos and experiences with internet accessible
resources.
Something about Memory and Learning, Thinking and Education
Getting Started
To start - here are a few sites that have already caught
the idea of building exciting learning centers:
Tools
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Starmer and the The MUSC IT
Lab