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Jackson Fox Assignment 10 What did you find interesting about the article? I enjoyed the discussion of the need to reform the educational models that prevail in our society to fit into the information age. I particularaly enjoyed the discussion on the way in which we need to recognize the failings of the current university system to prepare us for a lifetime of career changes. I also found the discussion on changing the role of the teacher to be interesting. What did you find not interesting about the article? I can't say that I found anything to be not interesting in as much as I disagreed with the point. What do you consider the main message of the article? That we must recognize that the world no longer fits within the model that gave rise to our current educational system. People will most likely change careers several times throughout their lifetimes, and our current model still supports a world in which that is not true. Therefor we must look at how to expand the ideas inherent in lifelong learning to all levels of education. Furthermore, we must evaluate the roles and assumptions that guide our classrooms in order to facilitate this change. Describe in detail your mindset about learning I believe that my own mindset closesly follows the ideas laid out in the paper. I believe that we must recognize that building problem-solving skills is almost as important as learning domain-oriented skills. The problem lies in that we prepare our students, particularaly at the university level, not to be productive learners and designers but to be good skilled laborers. Unfortunately, the skills that we impart are too often out-dated or in danger of becoming so. Without imparting a more fundamental interest in learning, and the skills to do so, we will continually run into obsolete workers. How did you develop it? I believe my own ideas come from my own frustration at what I see as a dangerously narrow curriculum in the school of engineering. I feel that the students (engineers) CU produces are too focused on domain-oriented skills without any further grounding in problem-solving skills and knowledge outside their own discipline. I see this focus as producing graduates who are incapable of seeing "outside the box" and being truly productive workers. When did you develop it? I would say that I developed these ideas over the course of my university education. Did you ever change it? What made you change your mindset? I don't think I can say that my mindset has changed in so far as I never really considered the problem until I came to university. At that point I became frustrated with that I saw as a overly specific curriculum. Since then I have considered the problem in more depth anc come to the conclusions above. Has our course ("Design, Learning, and Collaboration") so far influenced in any way your mindset about learning? Yes it has. To a large degree this class has helped me sharpen my ideas even further. I had never been exposed to many of the concepts and problems that surround learning before, and doing so now has really helped me define my own thoughts further and to reevaluate them in the contextof the information provided in class. What is the impact of media / technologies (e.g., computers) on the formation of mindset – if any? Media has the ability to facilitate the formation of a mindset, but unfortunately it has become a mindset in its own. Many people see computers as some kind of savior, unfortunately computers have no real power in themselves. They are tools that can be used to create a new learning environment, th efacilitate the discovery and ingestion of knowledge. But at the same time they cannot be simply seen as adjuncts to the existing model. The model must be revised if computers (and other media) are to be used in a menaingful way.
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