Door Marjolein Winterink, Tjeerd Berlo, Hilde Staal en Joost Fortkamp
(samenstelling Rik Min)
Op deze pagina zie je een patient en een monitor. Deze patient is Maurice. Maurice wordt plotseling ziek. Dat ziet u op een gegeven moment op de monitor.
An interesting discussion - just in time? - in the IFETS-DISCUSSION-list; digest 339, just tells us:
This will be a short (relatively) posting as my thoughts on learning as
biological brain change were published in an article with that title in
Change, Nov/Dec 2000, pp. 34-40. (A barely readable scan can be found at
www.umassd.edu/cas/biology/ Click on faculty, then Leamnson).
This note is primarily cautionary against seeing what isn't there.
Nothing I said in a previous posting or anywhere else suggests any use
whatever of students' "learning styles." Trying to learn any subject
whatever using an inappropriate learning style can only lead to frustration.
Learning styles map onto subjects and not onto people. Learning to learn
is often primarily a matter of developing the learning style that is
appropriate to given content, and not forcing the content into one's
preferred learning style.
Neither did I suggest, nor do I believe, that mnemonics is the same as
learning. I consider something to have been learned when it is both
understood and remembered. Remembering how to spell mnemonic is not high
level learning. Knowing precisely what it means and how it should be used
would be. I deny the assertion that a mnemonic is what I intend by the
expression "learning to learn."
There is great danger in trying to reduce something as complex as
learning how a subject is learned to something simplistic. Having said
that, I'll nonetheless try. Learning how a neuron transmits a signal (as an
example) would entail knowing, functionally, the meanings of all the terms
used to describe the structure and its components. One then needs to
understand a long sequence of causalities and rehearse these until every
sub-function makes sense, i.e. why it has to work that way. Finally, the
drawings, definitions, and functions have to be practiced until the desired
neural circuitry is stabilized. After that the student can reconstruct
both the components and a rationale for why they need to be there and do
what they do.
I vigorously suggest that this difficult and time-consuming process
cannot be reduced to anything simpler, either in practice or in description.
Bob Leamnson
Scott Walker has raised a very important issue about self-regulation, which is a
extremely important aspect of learning in online learning environment. In addition,
we can never over-emphasize developing students' metacognitive skills even in a
face-to-face classroom for adult learners, especially in a graduate-level course. I
appreciate Scott sharing some of his learning-to-learn activities with the list.
Des Wilsmore pointed out the role of motivation in the learning process, and I can
see the relationship between the motivation and self-regulation. A learner with
strong self-regulation skills may likely to succeed, which may help to enhance
his/her self-esteem, which may further motivate the learner intrinsically.
Xun Ge, Prof. PhD.; University of Oklahoma; e-mail: xge@ou.edu
Recall that I only mentioned the use of mnemonics as an aid to remember
how to spell certain words and allow me to clarify that I did not state
that mnemonics were a primary form of learning spelling or any other
subject. I was and still am interested in how the use of mnemonics
could be explained by the sophisticated analyses associated with
brain-based learning.
Muhammad
Enschede, 22 dec. 2001.
The most common applications of "brain learning" in the public schools
are related to special education students who are often mentally
retarded or autistic. At low levels of mental capacity, the reduction
of learning to brain functions becomes useful, because the special
education students often suffer from reduced brain functioning and some
compensation for deficiencies can be achieved by related analyses. Are
there existing applications of brain-learning applications for other
kinds of students? Gifted and talented students, for example, or
students who have high IQ's, aren't currently involved in brain-learning
applications in anything more than a hypothetical, ex post facto, sense.
I think it is untrue to imply, as some brain learning theorists do, that
brain learning will lead to something akin to the Genome Project. The
Genome Project deals with a finite set of genetic possibilities that are
clearly defined and for which very tangible outcomes exist. Contrarily,
brain cell functions and the quasi-electrical passages of sense
impulses, along purported paths in identifiable yet general locations in
a brain composed of billions of cells, do not hold comparable potential.
Ironically enough, I see "brain learning" as reductionist!