Page 105 - Microsoft Word - The Future of Learning April 2017.docx

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Stage 4: The Learning Process12 Ideas
The weather can change, as can the amount of fuel in our petrol tank (or battery pack), and in fact most things vary, from our bank account balance to how content we feel with life. When we find something that changes or varies, it usually does so because something else is changing and that influences what we notice, get excited or worry about. We refer to anything that changes as a variable. When we observe a variable in a specific context and recognise its influence on another variable, we can create an idea.
A good example of a variable would be the weather. If the weather forecaster predicts rain for the week I am on holiday, then I may feel grumpy. The weather is one variable, and my mood is the other variable which is dependent on the weather. From my knowledge of weather and mood I can form a connection between the two variables and an idea can form. The idea I have is that this upcoming holiday may not be as exciting as I had hoped because the weather forecast is for rain.
Additional ideas that might spring to mind now may include, “Can we change the date for this trip?” or “Is it worth the extra cost to have a holiday without rain?” We must return to gathering more knowledge to answer these questions. The context remains as ‘being on holiday’, and in this context, rain is a nuisance as well as being a variable.
If we had just planted some lawn seed and we heard it was going to rain, then we would be happy. The forecast of rain and how we feel depends on the context. We cannot say that the relationship between the two variables (weather and feelings) means that rain is always good or always a nuisance. Right now, all we have is an idea for this one context – my holiday.
Ideas are defined as relationships between two or more variables in just a few contexts.
At this stage of the Learning Process the brain has only worked out the pattern in a few contexts, so it is still working on coming up with a general pattern that can be applied to other contexts.
Back to our example: (Stage 2A: IDEAS)
The second stage of the Learning Process is realising that the predicted weather (variable 1) may affect how you feel (variable 2) about your upcoming holiday. The idea is that if you hear the weather is going to be terrible while you are on holiday, you will probably be grumpy. You are then pleased when you hear a weather update indicating the forecast is for warm and sunny weather, so you are happy. The idea is that weather affects your mood when you go on a holiday.
Ideas develop as we interrogate and question our knowledge and we build increasing numbers of connections between the knowledge elements we have found. This emerging idea allows us to make some quite limited predictions but usually only for the context we have experienced, or ones that are very similar. We can predict that I will probably be happy if the sun shines next week while I am on holiday in Toledo, Spain. We can predict that towns not far from Toledo will also be warm and sunny. If the forecast for Toledo is for it to be sunny and warm, this does not mean that I can predict the weather for other towns in other countries. Ideas are useful but the predictions we can make based on this limited idea, are quite limited.
129 The chapter 16 summary video can be found here - https://youtu.be/KNaaUmaxdmg if you are reading the book, otherwise click on the video icon at the top of the page
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