The readings from our textbook this week tied in nicely with the Sadler piece. The book talked about the various different types of learning environments with the community: learner-centered, knowledge-centered, and assessment centered. The Sadler article focused mainly on the assessments and how teachers are to work with students to maximize their ability to perform well at various assessment tools.
I realize that this class is a required course for SLM folks, but I feel that these readings were focusing mainly on the instructional value of the various environments -- as in teacher & student, not really librarian & patron. Don't get me wrong, I did find the readings this week to be interesting, and I'm sure as librarians we will be able to benefit from these readings, I just feel that they were looking more at the teacher perspective.
In the chapter, I thought that the figure 6.1 was very helpful in demonstrating how the different learning environments are all intertwined within the overall learning community. Venn diagrams have always been very helpful for me when I'm trying to understand something. When teaching, we much keep in mind that a curriculum that looks at all learning environments together is more beneficial than have just a learner-centered environment, or just a knowledge-centered, or just an assessment-centered. To be fully beneficial to the student, we must incorporate all aspects, taking into consideration, the learner, the knowledge level, and the quality of the assessments.
From class on 31st: I enjoyed looking over and watching a couple of the screencasts, although it became apparent to me, that I didn't include all of the required aspects of the assigned screencast. I glad I got a chance to see some of the well-done screencasts, so if I ever feel the desire to create a screencast in the future, I will have some good techniques in mind. I also liked the group work where we came up with definitions. It's helpful for me to be able to work with other classmates, because then I am able to learn other people views, and be able to put what we learn in class into practice.
Venn diagrams... Yeah, never been my thing, I think maybe because they remind me of old math problems. Although I kind of liked math then, but I still just see math when I look at them. Anyways, yeah, quality of assessments is huge. Kind of an exaggerated example here, but showing some part of my writing to, say, a family member, and hearing what a great writer I am... Doesn't help. I'm just like, "no I'm not," and I go to try for real feedback somewhere else. Of course hearing "this is terrible" from a teacher without a reason is similarly unhelpful. Gotta know how to get better.
ReplyDeleteI think a couple of people made the same comment that the reading focused more on teaching librarians and schools instead of public librarians. I had the same thoughts since I am not interested in SLM myself; however, I still found them interesting.
ReplyDeleteI agree that the readings were more helpful for people who anticipate having more instructional interactions, whether with students in an SLM setting or with patrons in a workshop setting. Since we're all currently in that student role ourselves, I actually also like thinking about how the readings apply from that end-- what kinds of environments are most useful for me in different contexts? How do my instructors intentionally or inadvertently incorporate the ideas in the readings?
ReplyDeleteI had trouble connecting to the reading too but I like what Andrea said about applying the readings to us as students. Kind of taking it a step further, in our future careers we will have to teach ourselves in order to keep up with various advancements. Even now we have to teach things to ourselves a lot. I wonder how some of these teaching ideas apply to self-teaching methods. It would be hard, for example, from the learner-centered side to recognize your own (possibly faulty) prior knowledge and assumptions. But if you could, I bet it would be easier to teach yourself something. That all made sense in my head, but maybe not so much anymore. Sorry.
ReplyDeleteAs you work to find your public library self in these readings, don't overlook your potential role as a workshop leader for your peers, patrons, and local/state/national peers. That might give you some more sense of relevance.
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