Journal Entry for 9-23-2008

Well, to begin this journal I’m going to respond to things from my last journal. When I worked on my sketch book, I of course did the pre writing pages. After these two pages, I started with the writing of the metaphor. I thought it would be easier to do it in this order because if I knew what I was writing about before I started with the art work; it helped me think of ideas for the artwork much more easily. So once I finished my writing, I moved on to deciding what to draw about. This took a while, because I wanted to think of a way to combine the flashlight with my ideas that I wrote about in my metaphor, and decided on someone finding a bookshelf in a cave, which I meant to represent learning and or knowledge.
One thing that you mentioned in class the other day was our use of paragraphs, or lack of them. I thought that I could be brought into this group of students you were mentioning because in all of my previous journals, you’ll notice that I never used paragraphs but in this entry, I shall. The reason I did not before this is not because I don’t understand how to use paragraphs in a paper, but it is because I did not realize that it was necessary in the journal. I figured it would make less wasted space.
In class we talked about making connections in new learning and previous knowledge. We learned about new term called constructivism. I think that constructivism is a way of learning/ teaching where the teacher does not give answers and information straight to the students, but leads them in the correct direction and gives them the tools they need in order to accomplish the desired learning. When we built the ramps during class on Thursday I wasn’t sure of the connections you were guiding us towards. At first I thought that it was in a way some kind of metaphor for how students learn. I thought it might be that students are at often times graded for their performance, but when given the proper materials they can learn, and should be given credit for attempting to strive for perfection. After I realized that this was not it, or at least not what it was that you had planned for us to learn, at least in part. When we started talking about how our brains were learning, I thought that was really interesting. I noticed that when I thought about the way that I was learning, that my brain was making connections when building the ramp. I think at times, we have become so used to the way that our minds work that we forget to realize what it is they are doing. Until I thought about it I did not realize that I made connections quickly to combine my previous knowledge with what was going on with our ramp to make the ball stop at 6 feet. Seeing our ramp in action not only gave me some new knowledge that I could use and learn, but it also helped me remember old knowledge that I hadn’t thought about in a long time. After bringing up these lost thoughts and bits of knowledge, it does help make even more connections.
Towards the end of class, when you were talking about the way that constructivism and the way it works, I was then thinking about how a teacher that I had previously taught us by using constructivism. He allowed us to teach the lessons in class, so not only would we learn the content, but we would get practice in teaching. Then I realized that he also was allowing us to construct our own knowledge by letting us learn for ourselves. When we taught, we could learn what it was that we needed to change for the second time we taught in the class. I realized that this was constructivism. And I stopped and thought, and realized that in fact, at that point in time when I was thinking about the class I had in which I was teaching others, and the class we were having where we were talking about constrictive learning, that I was participating in constructive learning at that very moment because I was taking knowledge from a previous learning experience and combining it with new knowledge that we had learned in class. And like when I was working on the ramps, it happened without me realizing it initially, as it has happened before in the past without me noticing. So it seemed to me that one of the things I learned the most last Thursday was not entirely a new way of thinking, or a new way of learning, but to acknowledge that I have learned that way before, but just that I never noticed before.