Page 144 - Microsoft Word - The Future of Learning April 2017.docx

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Section 2:
Summary and Questions
The Learning Process optimises how the brain learns in the most efficient manner possible. By using this approach to learning, all learners can learn far more effectively and more equitably. This is achieved via the learner accessing and remembering information Just-In-Time, as opposed to Just-In-Case, using a range of media to access that information and then communicate the learners new understanding. Our brain retains knowledge, ideas, concepts and concept frameworks much more effectively when the learner has a degree of agency over their learning and when the learner is intrigued and curious, following an effective prompt.
Curiosity is seen more as a human instinct aligned closer to our senses than our feelings. Curiosity releases hormones in the brain that encourage the formation and retention of the memories surrounding ideas and concepts. Once curious, the learner requires the capacity to ask a range of question types to develop their knowledge and understanding to a deeper level. The knowledge and understanding must be relevant to what the learner is curious about, and the knowledge needs to be presented at a level and using a media format that the learner can comprehend. Increasingly, this means accessing multimedia resources such as video, info-graphics, presentations and audio clips, as well as text.
Questioning, driven by our curiosity, allows knowledge to be learned and retained very quickly.
Applying that knowledge and linking it to other, pre-existing knowledge (connecting and reflecting), and questioning that knowledge allows us to form new ideas. Ideas are relationships between variables within one or two contexts. Developing ideas allows us to start making some limited guesses or predictions. To make more accurate predictions we need to apply that idea to a range of different contexts and this results in the formation of an overarching concept. Once again, the more contexts we apply that idea to, the more powerful the concept becomes and the more accurate the predictions we can make when applying that concept.
Concept frameworks result from us linking knowledge, ideas and concepts together within a framework and this allows us to develop more complex understanding and provides greater potential for creating a greater range of solutions. Having a conversation with someone always involves a concept framework as we try and weld together how interested the other person is in the conversation, what they might be thinking about what we are saying as well as developing our next piece of conversation while listening to them. Most activities we are involved in rely on complex concept frameworks.
Knowledge, ideas, and concept frameworks are the raw material to which we can apply our creativity, to come up with new ideas and concepts that may have intrinsic or extrinsic value. Innovative, new ideas and concepts that have intrinsic value are developed by our capacity to apply our imagination in creative ways.
Innovation is when we take our knowledge, ideas and concepts, and via interrogation (questioning) and daydreaming, develop those into totally new (to us), ideas and concepts that may become the seeds that lead to ingenious products, systems, environments or media being produced. In this project the Learning Process has been developed across three distinct levels that have increasingly greater cognitive expectations.