Page 88 - Microsoft Word - The Future of Learning April 2017.docx

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Educator–Learners &115 Learner–Educators
Last century, applying the inquiry process was how innovative educators encouraged learners to learn and take ownership of their learning. What the Learning Process does is add a range of capabilities to the inquiry approach, so that learners have the capacity to manage their learning – to become independent, lifelong learners. Inquiry on its own was not very successful for many reasons. In the inquiry process, learners were not offered the required capabilities, including the skills, to:
• have the competence to manage their learning
• have an understanding of their learning mindset
• be aware of the power of curiosity and prompts
• have the questioning skills to build their knowledge
• interrogate their knowledge to create meaning
• apply their creativity to be innovative and ingenious
• demonstrate ingenuity by creating new products, systems, environments and/or media.
The Learning Process develops the learner’s capability in each of these domains so that they can take increasing agency for their learning, over time. Acknowledging this set of capabilities and creating the resource to support each of these is critical to increasing learner agency.
As we age, there can be a tendency to lose confidence that we can adapt to the new technologies and we become increasingly concerned about not knowing and not being able to keep up with everything. The graph to the right116 demonstrates the exponential growth in digital information over a decade.
Resource 36: The Exponential Rise in Computational Power
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No wonder we are cautious. It is not possible for the learners in our classrooms, or ourselves, to keep up with everything ‘Just-In-Case’ we may need to know it, sometime in the future. We need to trust both ourselves and our learners that we can all learn dynamically by applying he Learning Process to build understanding ‘Just-In-Time,’ when we need it. Part of our educational heritage is that educators were expected to know most things; at least within their domain of expertise. The ability to know about and fully understand any one domain of learning is no longer possible for anyone, let alone frantically busy educators.
It is now critical that everyone understands the application of the Learning Process to be able to learn in the most efficient and effective way possible; Just-in-Time. Educator-learners need to be able to apply the Learning Process to learn as effectively and efficiently as possible in their lives, as well as building that capability into the lives of the learner-educators in their care.
115 The chapter 12 summary video can be found here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xsrtalu1AIU if you are reading the book, otherwise click on the video icon at the top of the page
116 Ban, Uli. ‘What does Being More Advanced Mean’ (2014) Retrieved from http://www.futuretimeline.net/forum/topic/7480-what-does- being-more-advanced-mean/