Teach people to teach themselves

What stands out for me most is that we need to teach people to teach themselves. Everyone needs to design and develop their own learning methodology and implement for the rest of their lives. This methodology needs to include and recognize other people as places where your knowledge resides. People also need to alter the methodology through time, but it is still their own learning design methodology customized and upgraded for them and by them. I believe people can begin to get meta-cognitive during their teens. I think this timing would be different with everyone. But when a person is ready they need to develop (with rigor) their own learning approach.

Gears of my childhood

I am involved in the current running of Learning Creative Learning with MIT and P2Pu. A fantastic online course which is prompting much reflection and confirming much of what I am doing with inspiring adult learners. I am definately on the right road!

This weeks activity is to;
Read Seymour Papert’s essay on the “Gears of My Childhood” and write about an object from your childhood that interested and influenced you.

I struggled with this. I didn't have an object like Papert had, something that I grew my learning around, something I would use to visualize or conceptualize my learning. Something I did have, and still have... is the bicycle. I rode my bicycle everywhere, to school, from school, to the park, just up and down our dead-end road. My social life was around the bicycle for many years, we had a bike club on our street. Every day and every weekend we would meet-up and do things, the bicycle was a constant.   I didn't think about the bicycle in direct relationship with my learning. It never was a gear to my learning. I would rather see is as a foundation to most of what I did, and played a big part of forming who I am today.

• The bicycle provided a freedom to travel great distances, unsupervised. Today, I love to travel.
• The bicycle provided me access to a number of different social circles and friendships. Today, I know many people and socialize across social and economic domains.
• The bicycle provided me travel to many different events. Today, my interests and studies are broad.
• The bicycle allowed me to escape the restraints of what was expected of me. Today, I seek (with confidence) alternate routes to desired outcomes.
• The bicycle was easy to take apart and put back together. Today, I am constantly taking things apart and putting them back together, often improving them along the way.
• The bicycle caused me injury, but I always made it home. Today, I pick myself up on bad days and have persistence to keep going.
• The bicycle took me places I could not have otherwise gone. Today, I am still curious and follow thoughts, ideas and inspirations to places I would not have otherwise gone.

I know that the bicycle isn't the same as the gear as described by Papert. I never used the bicycle as an analogy or image to base my learning. The bicycle provided me a freedom to become an autodidactic.