1. didactic (line 2, p.1)
2. mooted (line 14, p.2)
3. iterative (line 37, p.6)
I have (by 1638h, 23 Feb 06) gone to www.dictionary.com to find out the meanings.
Othographical error I found:
1. meatcognitive (line 4, p.8) - perhaps I am wrong here. We are supposed to think about the meat we are going to eat OR perhaps it should be "metacognitive" :P
*OKAY, Richard! These are not reflections! No one is interested you did not know what some words mean or whether there is any spelling mistake! GET STRAIGHT TO THE POINT!*
*SIGH*
There are many things covered in this article. Firstly, a definition of engaged learning is illustrated from various sources. The few things I can gather (and believe me you they are not many) are:
a. learners are responsible for their own learning
b. there should be AUTHENTIC interdisciplinary problems to solve.
Next the article goes on to define what AUTHENTIC tasks are. I mean, as educators, we know we should as far as possible, incorporate authentic tasks into our lessons but how do we know they are authentic? The article gives some aspects like:
1. Contexts with ill-defined problems
2. Presence of ambiguities and uncertainties
3. Driven to apply existing knowledge state
4. Communal inquiry
5. Presence of expertise
One thing that leaps out at me at this point is that "the fundamental difference between the active and traditional forms of learning is in the exercising of self-regulation behaviours such as planning, organising, and other monitoring actions" (p.4). This somehow reminds me of SAIL (yes, yes, I have actually done my blog reflection for SAIL earlier and then came to this thicker article, but you didn't see this)
And then, Problem-based Learning (PBL) is suggested to not only provide authentic learning but also promote self-regulated learning. What I found interesting is the fact that PBL originated from medical school real-world case studies. This reminds me of a show I am watching called Grey's Anatomy. For those who are working at night (wait, we should all be working at night), this show airs on Mondays at 11pm after Desperate Housewives.
Allow me to jump to p.9. "AUTHENTICITY IS BOTH PROBLEM AND PROCESS". This statement is powerful because I realise I always think I should come up with authentic problems. The process of getting to some solutions should just be as real as possible!
The article then suggests a set of design principles for both the problem and the process which I shall summarize as PA(D)OCMETS. I have put parentheses for D because this element appears both for the design of problems and processes.
When the article discusses the implications for engaged learning environments, I was thinking how technology can help foster such an environment.
1. WebQuests might be useful for
(a) giving meaningful and real life complex problems for pupils
(b) staging activities and investigations
(c) embedding information cases
2. Blogs, forum discussions (and perhaps TJC's THINKCYCLE) might be useful for
(a) providing supportive, cognitive and reflective tools
(b) monitoring and planning
Thus, my proposal is this: Should there be a workshop that allows us to promote engaged learning (which is the key focus) by incorporating webquests, blogs and/or forum discussions? Hitherto we are already providing workshops that use these tools (but so far none showing how they can be linked and used to impact teaching and learning).
I only have one dilemma: If we were to use these tools, then why are we giving authentic problems in a virtual environment?
Why indeed?
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