Sunday, August 15, 2010

The Learning Curve

There is excitement in learning new skills and even more excitement in sharing new skills and knowledge.  But there is also frustrations.  How do I help someone else understand what I am saying or doing?  How do I keep those who are quick to learn involved while they wait for others who are not so quick to catch up?  How do I diagnose the problems in understanding and the rethink my instruction to reteach the same skills?  Why do some students skip over the tutorials and forge ahead without any direction?  Unfortunately, a good number of them will fail at this approach and then have to ask me questions the tutorial would have explained (if they had watched it).  No wonder my head hurt at times this week.

But I was inspired by the ability of my students to help each other, to learn from their failures and mine, to begin the wonderful process of learning how literature, writing, and thinking can be combined with all that is great about Web 2.0.  So in spite of the headaches, it was a terrific first week of school where learning was happening for my students and me every moment of the day.  We will all be better in the end as both success and failure teach us how to be better and wiser.

No comments: