Kolb and the Foundations of Contemporary Approaches to Experiential Learning
In the excerpt from this work, Kolb refers to the ever increasing need for adults to continue learning to keep pace with our constantly changing, advancing society. For example, our children may be digital natives but as adults we are immigrants to the new technology. He refers to many theorists before him in sighting how “intelligence shaped by experiences is a product of the interaction between the person and his/her environment.” Are there experiences in your own life that demonstrate how through the need to ‘adapt’ and through a ‘spirit of inquiry’ you have gained knowledge and grown? Are there ways you can adapt this to your own curriculum or ways you can see to adapt it to your current studies?
posted by lawrence @ 6:20 PM
11 Comments:
Is blogger bombing out on everyone else, too?
I think learning, particularly experiential learning, is a lifelong process. We are constantly adapting to new jobs, new social situations, new environments, where we’re continually challenged by others and ourselves. My job is a constant challenge: in keeping up with new technology, the entire organization is always striving to research and learn new ways of solving problems, creating new software, and refining user interface design. In my particular job, I’m always researching and testing new information delivery methods (hence this program) and trying out these different ways.
I am not a teacher, but in my 801 project, I’m designing instructional material to help new immigrants acclimate to the local culture. In the course, I’m designing role playing workshops where the students can practice their language and communication skills based on scenarios that may occur in the locale (either in an office environment or just in a daily environment). Then, the students can further practice by going out into the environment and testing out their skills, as well as develop them. By enabling the students to conceptualize the situation where they might use these skills and creating situations where they can interact with others, I hope to create some semblance of an experiential learning environment (not sure about the verbiage of that sentence, but I hope you know what I mean) that Kolb describes in his article.
In my own experience, adapting to the new environment was very crucial, because the new technology is shaping the way we express ourselves; for example in my own training as a filmmaker, learning traditional Flat Bed, trimming the 16mm material film, and editing them for hours had its own challenge; now I am doing cinema, and creating a film in totally different set up with digital equipment; working on project for a short film, I sit down with a computer and go through editing of a film much faster, and relatively easier; this changing technology even pushes people involved in filmmaking to find new ways of expressing themselves; the need is urgent, and make me to keep myself learning new technology of digital cinema; just in the last weeks I made very short film by using “imovie” which is the most basic of alls, but the ability of having access to it in a more easy, and affordable situation makes it true that I am getting close to fulfill the dreams of life. There is an anecdote about an Iranian filmmaker who is already famous in the international scale "Abass Kiarostami" that he converted totally to the new media, and shooting his feature films in the digital format; and this guy has all the resources available to him to make film in 35 mm professional film format, but he deliberately refuse to do so;
In my own experience, adapting to the new environment is very crucial, because the new technology shaping the way we express ourselves; for example in my own training as a filmmaker, learning traditional Flat Bed, trimming the 16mm material film, and editing them for hours had its own challenge; now I am doing cinema, and creating a film in totally different set up with digital equipment; working on project for a short film, I sit down with a computer and go through editing of a film much faster, and relatively easier; this changing technology even pushes people involved in filmmaking to find new ways of expressing themselves; the need is urgent, and make me to keep myself learning new technology of digital cinema; just in the last weeks I made very short film by using “imovie” which is the most basic of alls, but the ability of having access to it in a more easy, and affordable situation makes it true that I am getting close to fulfill the dreams of life. There is an anecdote about an Iranian filmmaker who is already famous in the international scale "Abass Kiarostami" that he converted totally to the new media, and shooting his feature films in the digital format; and this guy has all the resources available to him to make film in 35 mm professional film format, but he deliberately refuse to do so;
In my own experience, adapting to the new environment is very crucial, because the new technology shaping the way we express ourselves; for example in my own training as a filmmaker, learning traditional Flat Bed, trimming the 16mm material film, and editing them for hours had its own challenge; now I am doing cinema, and creating a film in totally different set up with digital equipment; working on project for a short film, I sit down with a computer and go through editing of a film much faster, and relatively easier; this changing technology even pushes people involved in filmmaking to find new ways of expressing themselves; the need is urgent, and make me to keep myself learning new technology of digital cinema; just in the last weeks I made very short film by using “imovie” which is the most basic of alls, but the ability of having access to it in a more easy, and affordable situation makes it true that I am getting close to fulfill the dreams of life. There is an anecdote about an Iranian filmmaker who is already famous in the international scale "Abass Kiarostami" that he converted totally to the new media, and shooting his feature films in the digital format; and this guy has all the resources available to him to make film in 35 mm professional film format, but he deliberately refuse to do so;
In my own experience, adapting to the new environment is very crucial, because the new technology shaping the way we express ourselves; for example in my own training as a filmmaker, learning traditional Flat Bed, trimming the 16mm material film, and editing them for hours had its own challenge; now I am doing cinema, and creating a film in totally different set up with digital equipment; working on project for a short film, I sit down with a computer and go through editing of a film much faster, and relatively easier; this changing technology even pushes people involved in filmmaking to find new ways of expressing themselves; the need is urgent, and make me to keep myself learning new technology of digital cinema; just in the last weeks I made very short film by using “imovie” which is the most basic of alls, but the ability of having access to it in a more easy, and affordable situation makes it true that I am getting close to fulfill the dreams of life. There is an anecdote about an Iranian filmmaker who is already famous in the international scale "Abass Kiarostami" that he converted totally to the new media, and shooting his feature films in the digital format; and this guy has all the resources available to him to make film in 35 mm professional film format, but he deliberately refuse to do so;
sorry for repetition!actually for the last week i was not able to reach the itec 800 blog;did anybody had the sam problem;i di log from school finally;great interaction between blogger s of itec 800;here the experience of blogging is what Kolb is talking about!
Becoming a teacher was and still is a experiential learning process for me. During the first semester of the credential program I was a part of here at SFSU we talked about the nature of schools and about race/sex/class-ism. There were many discussions about creating lesson plans, inquiry teaching and constructivism. But in some ways it wasn't until the second semester and student teaching that I really began to learn how to teach. immersion in a classroom with my own students helped me to adapt and become an effective teacher. It was my experiences with the students and there reactions to the ideas for learning that I had that really helped me to see what worked and didn't work. During my student teaching semester and still now I thought of every day going into class as an experiment. It became a fascinating game of developing a new idea that I though would help my students to really understand a concept, putting it into practice and then seeing what happened. It was interesting to find that often it was not the activities that I thought would work best that ended up being the hits.
While I was student teaching learning theory also took on new meaning for me. The word constructivism gets thrown around a lot among teachers and in credential programs. But through teaching and observing other teachers I finally came to understand what it meant. I had to experience it before it really had any meaning to me.
As a freelancing graphic designer, it's imperative to my survival to remain as up-to-date on various software programs as I can get. To that end, I've been attending classes over the years wherever I can. Additionally, my experience in the dotcom industry pretty much allowed me to order any software I desired, and day-to-day tasks really put us to the test....it was almost like some sort of boot camp....every day brought more challenges and jobs to produce, with ever tightening deadlines. It really helped to "sharpen the saw."
This past experience has provided a solid platform to which I can add the knowledge of Instructional Technology/Instructional Design. It's an indispensible tool, allowing me to bypass some of the prerequisite courses in the ITEC program, a real time and money saver.
I am a life learner we live in an information society and technology changes how we live and work. Just the other day I had to learn how to use a new option on my TV , my cable company install a program that allows me to save movies in a data bank and play them back within a 24 hour period ; it also allows me to use the options fast-forward pause, and rewind. This was new information it was not that important but it is new information that will change my viewing style. You see , when you learning something new it will sometimes changes your behavior or outlook. We are learning animals we react to our environment and we learn from it.
Sometimes we have to adapt our learning to meet our financial needs. Example Joe got the promotion because he knows xxxxxxxxx. All of us are trying to improve our employment status by participating in the Itec program. If you are not learning new thing you are probably not growing.
As Kent mentioned when you work as a contractor you have to continually update and learn new skills to keep in business. Over the past 20 years I have found myself in the forefront learning new software applications so I can be the first to teach them. It is a good thing I like exploring new things. It has been an asset in my profession. Now I find I have a solid foundation that allows me to adapt and learn software programs easily.
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