Week 10 - Hit a Home Run with Informal Learning!
I love learning. I've always been one who is curious about new things - I'd read the cereal box at breakfast, and share my "facts" with my parents. Now that I have kids of my own, I have one that is the same way - continuously trying to impress everyone around him with the tidbits of knowledge that he has discovered along the way.
This week, I read an article by Martinez and Whiting on designing informal learning environments. The chart in the article really caught my eye - suggesting education is a continuum of formal and informal and that blogs, social media, podcasts are the most informal of learning, primarily because they focus on learner CHOICE. This is so important with learners today - kids love the option to view short videos or read short snippets on what they care about.
In the article, they reference museums and how learning there is often informal. I LOVE museums and remember being frustrated as a child because my dad wanted to read every placard to consume all of the information and facts about every exhibit, and I wanted to do the hands on part and skip the rest at a young age. The choice for how the information is consumed is really remarkable, and the design that goes into each exhibit to accommodate all learners is a model for how educators can consider instruction.
My husband is in the other room right now watching the first few games of opening day baseball. I'm thinking of how a baseball game could really be used as informal learning for upper elementary students. Math, science, language learning, social skills, biographies of players and of the game itself - a group of kids could really get excited about all of this learning that could take place around a baseball game. The article references constructionism and project based learning principles. Perhaps after the students watched the game, or before, they could PLAY a game of baseball and experience it from another perspective and learn in that way. Sure, some would learn surface level information and some would make deeper connections, but the exposure could be of benefit (the how I got there information) in the future.
As someone who likes to learn, I also smiled involuntarily reading your blog. I imagined you reading the back of a cereal box.
ReplyDeleteI believe that learning can occur or be created anytime, anywhere. So, many people these days are very interested in informal education. The real goal of education is knowledge transfer to apply what has been learned in the classroom to real life. However, if you learn informal in real life, I think the effect will be greater. And students will be more motivated and interested. They learn from things that relate to them and are actually happening. So I think the role of the instruction designer is important. Do you really need to create practice based on theory? Do you have any ideas for a good informal study plan?
I agree - and we can't *force* people to learn, or to later demonstrate or recall information they've been exposed to. As an instructor, I had lessons that I *thought* were well designed crash and burn (we did a socratic seminar that was a disaster!) - my intentions were right on, but I didn't focus on the outcomes and assessment, more the activity itself and when it didn't work, I didn't have a plan B to back it up. The lesson that day was that adults make mistakes too, but it wasn't what I intended.
DeleteI think there are a number of strategies where informal learning can be accomplished daily in an in person or virtual classroom - fun fact of the day, quote of the day, a bell ringer to get started, etc. As for an informal study plan, I've never designed one, because I guess I've always felt that by designing it, it becomes formal in some ways.