Week 11 (Nov 2-8, 2009) "What is Learning" and " How Can I Effectuate It"

“What is Learning”
Learning from the experiences of others, through the things they communicate and the stories they share is a great way to learn. For almost 6 years, as a part of my teaching, I helped train food handlers in Salt Lake County, as a cooperative community education arm of the Jordan School District. I learned several of the things to teach through stories from the other teachers, the inspectors and the class participants. And many of the stories were from personal experience. There is nothing better than preparing a class with how they think contaminants are transferred, then having them ask to know the number one way. You tell a story of a person with a cat or dog, who brings the bacteria to many others, then explaining how with that animal in the house, “Fecal-oral transfer, the number one way of getting food-borne illness (what you call stomach flu, 24-hour flu, quick-step), is from hands contaminated with animal or human feces from poor hand washing and environmental fecal contamination”. We learn well from stories that come at the exact moment we are ready to learn. Hope I didn’t cause the loss of someone’s favorite pet.
“How Can I as a Teacher Effectuate Learning?”
If we are to be the teacher, we have to put in the ‘effort to become the expert’. We need to be the repository of many case-based learning scenarios and situations, a historical reference library on the specific things that our learning goals seek to achieve. Then we must create a learning situation where the natural consequences of the daily learning environment cause the learner to come to a point where they cannot resolve a problem without a case that opens their knowledge base for comparison to other similar cases and has them asking for additional cases to gain a more effective knowledge base for decision making. This is how to effectuate significant learning.