scaffolding

Learning is........ well, that's hard to say.  We are nearing the end of our Learning Theories course and it is interesting to see how my entries have changed, or not in some cases, since the beginning of the summer.  But, learning is, in my opinion, difficult to summarize.  Is it simply new knowledge that is taken into a learner's mind, or is it that with tweaking existing knowlege, or is it something else entirely.  Well, not to step on anyone's toes, but I feel that the better question to answer this week is "how can a teacher best affectuate learning". 

Learning: I really liked the idea of scaffolding from this week's reading.  It seems fairly logical to me that knowledge can built in stages and that a learner can build this knowledge starting with more structure and help from the instructor and gradually moving to less and less of this.  There seem to be some "emotional" ties in starting with more support, this can help a student to feel more comfortable and willing to try new things.