I hate to admit it, but I have always been really bad at studying. I do like studying, but I never developed any unique studying style that suits me individually. It has been just plain reading reading reading, supplemented with some excercises. This is one of the reasons why I picked the course "emerging technologies and learning". I created an account in a blog site earlier to write down my thoughts about life in Korea, but I never accomplished it. Hence I hope to use this blog not only for my learning reflections, but also for sharing my experiences in Korea irrelated to the course I am currently taking.
Video of David Wiley talking about teaching and learning with technologywas very interesting! It didn't only reach for scholars and professional teachers on how to teach efficiently in 21st century open e-studying, but also affected me as a student on how to use these possibilities. I also tried ChaCha mentioned in the video and it looked very nice! There are so many categories that you can find answers for almost anything. Surely, a lot of them you can also find by googling, but ChaCha gives a chance to get short answers from people who are experienced with finding information. The thing that bothers me a little about ChaCha is that the answers could be affected by the replier’s own opinions and viewpoints. Wiley gave a nice example of open and connective course where his students should not return the homework to him, but instead post them on blogs (like we are doing now). That means others can read it too, making the content more open. It also means students are more careful of how they write. Wiley mentions Western Governors University, which sounds really great! Give people QUALITY assigments and let them find the information, which is 100% possible in these days. Of course this might not be applicable to, for instance, science classes. The amount of time that you sit in the class doesn't matter, only the outcome. This means, you can hang out with your friends, have your own time when you want and study when you want. That is what openness is partly about in my opinion.
I completely agree with Partnership for 21st Centurythat nowadays basic education should not only cover the core subjects, but also things such as career and life skills, how to survive in everyday social situtaions and keeping track of the new technologies and potentially growing database of information. Anymore our objective is not to remember things, but to know where to find all the information and how to use it. Some of Finnish high schools have already moved to this dogma, for example there are a lot more book exams or where you can use the internet. The difficulty is not to remember what the teacher wants, but to find the information, use it critically and combine all the information gathered from different sources. This is what P21 also emphasises in the Learning and Innovation Skills –part. I feel I am quite collaborative but I can still improve myself in that field. About communication in diverse environments, I believe we as exchange students are getting a huge advantage.
PS. I used to hate overhead projectors, luckily they are almost entirely gone
PS2. ChaCha taught me how to make gun by just typing text (found this very randomly on the web-page and I was amused why someone actually needs this kind of information). This shows how services such as ChaCha can be used to find just about everything. It is up to us how we use this information.
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