I was reading an article by Jenny Brundin on the Mindshift blog which is called "What a student learned from a short experiment in self-directed learning". The article was about a 17 year old student who chose to continue on with his learning at school in a self-directed approach. He chose how he spent his time, what he read and engaged with and journaled his learning and thoughts along the way. Sound familiar??? I started to think about my own learning in this course and what he was saying resonated with me.
I found that I spent a lot of my day questioning whether my approach to my learning was the right approach, whether I should be doing things differently and whether or not I was getting it. I work much better if I spend a whole day working on one course instead of flitting between different courses, or work, study and kids etc. I work better if I can just lock myself away somewhere, read and engage with materials and then blog about it, relating what I have read and engaged with to my own learnings and teaching.
When it comes to learning something new through a N&GL approach, the timing needs to be right and I think this is another element that went wrong for me when learning about how to run 5km. When I thought back about other things I have learnt through N&GL in the past, it has been because I needed to know the information and wanted it then and there. With learning about running 5km, it was not something that I truly needed to know how to do, nor did I need it then and there. Because I was timepoor and the motivation was lacking, looking to achieve this task was something that was probably the wrong choice considering all that I have just mentioned. Bizarrely during the time that I was researching about how to run 5km I was also researching about eczema and what others have done to treat it, including diet related treatment. This was because my 2 year old has it really bad all over his body. It is amazing how when you have a critical thing you need to find an answer to, N&GL is a great way to get a different perspective on how to tackle the problem at hand. I was intrinsically motivated to answer my burning questions about eczema and I did find A LOT of answers (not all of them helpful). I tried some of them - things to put in his bath to help his skin, blogs about holistic healing, etc etc. I googled most of them on pinterest and followed the links.
So although my learning about running 5km didn't really pull off, during the same time I did actually use N&GL to learn about other things that I had an intrinsic motivation to want to learn about. By the way, my son's eczema is really good at the moment, but this was a combination of what I learnt online, and seeing the dermatologist!!
I found that I spent a lot of my day questioning whether my approach to my learning was the right approach, whether I should be doing things differently and whether or not I was getting it. I work much better if I spend a whole day working on one course instead of flitting between different courses, or work, study and kids etc. I work better if I can just lock myself away somewhere, read and engage with materials and then blog about it, relating what I have read and engaged with to my own learnings and teaching.
When it comes to learning something new through a N&GL approach, the timing needs to be right and I think this is another element that went wrong for me when learning about how to run 5km. When I thought back about other things I have learnt through N&GL in the past, it has been because I needed to know the information and wanted it then and there. With learning about running 5km, it was not something that I truly needed to know how to do, nor did I need it then and there. Because I was timepoor and the motivation was lacking, looking to achieve this task was something that was probably the wrong choice considering all that I have just mentioned. Bizarrely during the time that I was researching about how to run 5km I was also researching about eczema and what others have done to treat it, including diet related treatment. This was because my 2 year old has it really bad all over his body. It is amazing how when you have a critical thing you need to find an answer to, N&GL is a great way to get a different perspective on how to tackle the problem at hand. I was intrinsically motivated to answer my burning questions about eczema and I did find A LOT of answers (not all of them helpful). I tried some of them - things to put in his bath to help his skin, blogs about holistic healing, etc etc. I googled most of them on pinterest and followed the links.
So although my learning about running 5km didn't really pull off, during the same time I did actually use N&GL to learn about other things that I had an intrinsic motivation to want to learn about. By the way, my son's eczema is really good at the moment, but this was a combination of what I learnt online, and seeing the dermatologist!!