Fitting the Pieces Together

Recently, I have come to realize that there are new ways to learn. I am thirty-seven, I consider myself young...I remember my University days of going to lectures, watching presentations and writing copious notes. I loved going to the University library – there were comfortable chairs to sit in and I would spend hours there. Some days I would drift along the rows of books looking for something new and interesting, other days I would scour the shelves in pursuit of the next piece of some intellectual puzzle I was wrestling with in my mind. In the last few months, I have begun to understand the true impact of the internet on learning. It turns out that the World-Wide-Web is my new library – and although I have known that for a while and used it to find information, I wasn’t truly aware of the depth of information available until I started reading blogs and Learnist Boards.
The point of realization came for me when I was studying learning styles and theories and glanced over student-centered learning. Now, I have a degree in Education, so this whole topic is something I have studied before and am very familiar with, however reading it this time was very different. For a start I was reading it from my iPad, not from a paper book. While that may sound like a very small and insignificant difference it’s one of those differences that actually has caused a bit of a revolution in my learning… as I am reading the blog about student-centered learning, I am able to click on hyperlinks throughout the text to find out more information. Some of these take me to other sites and blogs and this sends me on a learning journey through the ether. I make use of APPS like Pocket and Feedly to make sure I have marked my journey and won't lose my way. I use Notes on my iPad to jot down pertinent facts and transfer them later into Google Docs. My pen and paper are now my fingers and touch screen on my iPad...my new 'paper' speaks to me! It reacts to my words and comes up with helpful suggestions and information. I am no longer learning alone with my book, there is a whole cohort of experts, colleagues and like-minded people from whom to draw wisdom and information. I realise now that I have always learned best when given a degree of control over my learning, and although student-centered learning suited me in school it certainly did not have the boundless learning possibilities associated with it that it has today. Many people predicted that with the rise in computer use and Internet dependency, we would all become isolated from society. It seems that the Internet has shown us instead what it is really like to be connected to the World.