Week 1 learning activity and my thoughts

1. I was educated in a time where there were distince levels of employment expectations. You were either going tobean unskilled labourer a tradesperson or a University trained professional. The location of your school and residence often dictated your future opportunities and social expectations (this still occurs). It was and is to do with prconcieved ideas and expectations from teachers, parents and societal needs.

I was always pointed in the direction of becomming a tradesperson, that was sopposed to be my pinacle of attainment! Well, you guessed it, I became a Chef who worked long hours for not much money but in the eyes of my teachers and parents I had 'made it'. This is a clear case of being educated using 'Industrial age' ideas.

6. Basically, as mentioned above, I was educated in a 'mode 1' fashion. Mode 2 appears to facilitate more oppotunities for students. Information can be sought anywhere and any time through defferent sources during education. It is more learner orientated and is reflected upon, not just teachers but also peers. We, as future learning managers, will have to be open to changing technologies, different learning styles/abilities, remain flexible in our approch to teaching and be reflective with our learning and teaching. Above all though, we have to help our students to be happy whilst learning and therefore enjoy the experience.

8. Smith and Mienczacowski believe that the problems and out-datedness of schools is not just a school problem. It is a systemic problem and must be addressed accordingly by the wider/whole community. Society is changing, therefore education and educators must change with it to produce self-thinking, self-motivated and experimenting learners.

With freedom bestowed upon us today come a dark side, those who take advantage of others, people willing to do anything to advance their careers and time-challenged parents. As a man in my 50's, I choose to move with the times and see the benefits of a more enlightened youth. They might not be climbing trees or playing in gocarts but what they are doing is more in tune with what they need today. My young children make my day everyday with their 'forward thinking' and 'no technology scares me' attitudes. Family values are better for my children than they were for me, it's a parents joice to instill them.

Self manged learning experiences and student autonomy over what, how and why student learning takes place (Foley 1998) sums up my personal expectations of what I must strive for as a future learning manager. We must eagerly source new technologies, as we do with new books, and then utilise the good ones and disgard the useless ones. In my experience, we have a lot to learn from our young students, they are already accomplished learners. We only need to introduce some relevant information, vet some other information and guide them through their learning experience.

Michael