The new CULTURE of learning

I was captured by Thomas and Brown’s idea of the new culture of learning. Before reading this chapter, I never had deemed the learning environment as a culture that is cultivated through the interaction among teachers and learners. My perception to learning environment has always stayed in a traditional educational venue due to my learning experiences back in China for 18 years. Even though I had taken some of the courses here in U of C of which expanding my knowledge in education, I still have a hard time to essentially break through the critical point of my prior knowledge in teaching and learning.

This chapter has really prompted me to think back on my learning experience in school. The mechanistic view of learning they mentioned is the way I was being taught for the whole time. In Chinese school settings, learning indeed is treated as a series of steps to master the knowledge of each subject. In this case, tests and examinations is the only way to measure our learning outcomes. I found Thomas and Brown’s statement supports my perspective. They said: “In this teaching-based approach, standardization is a reasonable way to do this, and testing is a reasonable way to measure the result.”(p.35) As a result, I had tests for NINE subjects in total in every other week at the last year in high school. The purpose of this was getting us ready for the final entrance examination for university. That is sort of our ultimate examination that what your future path will be is depending on this one.  We seldom have projects or collaborative learning methods because the final university entrance exam (FUEE) is mark individually. In educator’s point of view, everything that does not contribute to boost the scores for the FUEE is considered unnecessary.

That means, before taking master courses here in Canada, I never truly experience a learning environment which is served as a community that learners, learners and teachers can interact with each other and together to build the knowledge schema. This makes me think of our blog post for this course. Why are we posting our thoughts and comprehensions of the reading instead of having our own course note? What is the purpose of this? Along with my study progress in the Edtech field, I can now understand. What we are doing is to set ourselves in an open, collaborative learning environment where we are not only responsible for our own study but also for the whole group of people. With sharing our own ideas, commenting on others’, we are building a community. We are cultivating a new culture of learning. Like Thomas and Brown remarked: “… The new culture of learning focuses on learning through engagement within the world.” With the aid of technology, we collaborate through the online platform such as Google docs, Prezi, Wikis. These are the new learning environment that I ought to study about besides for the traditional, tangible educational venues I have always looking at.
                I am really exhilarated that with my graduate studying going on, my mind travels further and further. Bit by bit breaking through my old perception of education now I am embracing new notion of learning in this technological advanced world.