Katie Byrnes
Design, Learning, & Collaboration
January 19, 2005
Assignment #1

Read the article
Fischer, G. (1998) "Making Learning a Part of Life-Beyond the 'Gift-Wrapping' Approach of Technology." Notes from 6/96 NSF Symposium on Learning and Intelligent Systems available at: http://l3d.cs.colorado.edu/presentations/gf-wlf/

Briefly discuss the following issues:
1. what did you find
1.1. interesting about the article? “information technologies have been used to mechanize old ways of doing business rather than fundamentally rethinking the underlying work processes and promoting new ways to create artifacts and knowledge” Education with or without technology falls into this same trap of small, incremental change that doesn’t address larger, systematic issues. I think it is exciting and critical that we begin to question the way things have been traditionally and look for new and innovative ways to enhance our traditional means of learning and teaching

1.2. not interesting about the article? Figure 5 didn’t seem that useful to me.

2. what do you consider the main message of the article? We all need to become and teach others to become life-long learners and we need to utilize what we know about how people learn to enhance people’s habits and motivations to learn.

3. click on one of the words in blue and see what happens?
3.1. is this feature useful? It is great for people who need clarification or a definition for a word.
3.2. in which other situations have you encountered this feature? Websites about theories/theorists.

4. global learning theories and approaches
4.1. do you know any of the people mentioned in the diagrams:
4.1.1. Skinner YES
4.1.2. Piaget YES
4.1.3. Papert NO
4.1.4. Illich NO
4.1.5. Vygotsky YES
4.1.6. Dewey YES
4.1.7. ignore Taylor

4.2. select one of the six
4.2.1. in case you know something write a paragraph what she/he has
contributed to a deeper understanding of learning?
Dewey revolutionized education with his focus on child-centered instruction. He is considered the father of progressive educational theory. He started a lab school at the University of Chicago where teachers designed, implemented and experimented with curriculum that focused on how children learn and how to create an environment to stimulate learning at various ages. He emphasized the importance of experience in learning.

5. identify one website (and mention the URL) which you consider interesting and relevant for “learning”! Write a one paragraph justification!
I guess I would say my email is one website that I use everyday to learn about the people and the events that impact my world. It allows me to know events both locally, nationally, and globally as well as personally meaningful events like soccer games or happy hours or seminars I may want to attend.