1. what did you find

1.1. interesting about the article?


what we thought was really interesting was the part of the paper about how teachers should teach students and the role they have to play on the development of the student's learning. In addition, it was really interesting the examples the author used to show evidence of how the different approaches of learning act on the student's performance. We also liked liked the educational tools that the author used to help visualize his ideas (Throwing darts under the water...).


1.2. not interesting about the article?


For me (javier), I was missing tow pages from the whole paper (page 10 and 13) and somehow it was kind of strange to figure out how the other papers were connected.
On the other hand, from my point of view ( Ali's ), I thought that some concepts and ideas were a little difficult to understand.


2. what do you consider the main message of the article?


The main message is that there is no perfect way of teaching, it all depends on what is the field that is going to be taught and also how the student will use the knowledge that they have gained. It therefore asks for a more dynamic style of teaching and learning through increasing the ability of teachers to be accomodated to different styles in teaching and the ability of the students to facilitate the learning process through the collaboration and contribution in these styles.


3. analyze and describe how you have learnt a complex systems (e.g.,“Microsoft Word” or a similar system incase you have never learnt MS-Word, Photoshop, Java, using the Web effectively, …)?


We think that the best way of learning a complex system is by actually starting to know all the basic information about it and the basic functions and uses. After that, the user/student should start using the basic functions or features of the system and at the same time understand what are their capabilities, therefore the student/user is putting on practice all he/she learned before. Once the second step achieved, the user/student should be having some incentive to find more about the system and start "playing" with the system and at the same time looking on reference books about these new features and try to understand what are their purpose in the system. This was our experience with MS-word and Java at least.


4. describe the most interesting / exciting learning episode of your life!


Javier - it was in high school when I started learning physics and my professor every week brought us some cool videos and we watched them for a couple of hours. After it, we had a lab which basically was the same experiment but his time we were the ones in charge of doing it.
Ali - In high school, when in our first lecture in philosophy our professor asked us to drop every single concept and corollary that we have had about religion, culture, customs, and gave us a month to think around us and be able to deduct conclusions from what we see. I was able to learn a lot in that experience because it taught me how to have independent thaughts away from any pressure outside to try to modify them.


5. write in one short paragraph (a) what the following concepts mean and (b) which role they have played in your personal learning (e.g., where you have encountered them)

5.1. learning by being told


Learning by listening from a person that most of the time has more experience than you. The role this learning has played is when we were learning how to start our schooling, we entered it without knowing anything about any field such as math, english or science. At that point of our lives we didint think about "why?", we were just learning everything they told us.


5.2. self-directed learning


This type of learning, is when we are gaining knowledge by ourselves due to our personal initiatives. We encounter it, when we want to know about how things work but you have no knowledge at all, so start digging for more information about it so that in the end you why know and how this thing works.


5.3. learning on demand


Learning on demand is when you encounter some problem and in order to solve it you need to gain more knowledge of it. You need to satisfy your needs of knowledge. We usually apply this type of learning when our work demands us for knowledge we don't have but that is necessary to finish the work.


5.4. discovery learning


Discovery learning happens when one of us reaches something never encountered before, and as soon as you get informed about it, you have had a discovery learning experience. This happened a lot in math routine programming, when you accidentally find out that there are easier ways to solve a certain problem by a method that was encountered out of nowhere.


5.5. experiential learning


This happens when one starts reasoning in a way that fits his/her field of work or studies. It happens from a continuous interaction with the people of a certain field. It's happening to us everyday.


5.6. informal learning


When one of us learned continuously from experiences of the everyday life and start acquiring experience from them. That happens to both of us in evry moment of the day.


5.7. collaborative learning


This happens when an individual is working with a team and alll the members of that team are sharing different ideas. Our main experience with this type of learning is from our senior project, where everyone of us had his strengths and weaknesses and we get to learn from each other.


6. which media support have you used and are you using for your learning?


Internet, video games, computers simulations, radio, tv, computers.