Is "Experiencing" the same as "Learning"?

Discussion question for Thinkering Studio students: Is experiencing the same as learning? If yes, are there subtle differences to the connotations of the words? If no, what distinguishes one from the other?


LEARN from Rick Mereki on Vimeo.

When is good enough good enough?

Always a tough question. Tougher still when it involves other people.

Next question, how many balls can be easily juggled? What if some are eggs?

Tripped up by a Learning Typology

Christopher D. Sessums posted an interesting matrix by Vavoula that was on Patrick Dunn's site.

Christopher commented primarily on the "Unintentional informal learning." I was interested in a different part, one that I work in much more. By the graphic, it would seem that assignments where the teacher gives either the goal or the process, but the other is determined by the student, would be "Intentional informal learning" just as would an assignment where the student determines both. To me, those three feel quite different. I'll have to go read what Vavoula means by "informal". I'll also have to consider what "explicitly defined" means. What if I have a general process, but the students are free to work creatively within that process? What if I have on overall subject goal, but students define many of the elements within that goal? Seems to me that there are many shades of formal and informal learning.

Student Notebooks in the Age of Social Networks

Many teachers have used authors notebooks, science journals, etc. in the past. There is tremendous value in them. But, now that we have easy access to blogs, wikis, social networks, and more, how do we take the student notebook/journal concept and adapt it for today's tools and learning methods? What I'm struggling with particularly write now is which tool is best for my students to conduct ongoing social studies inquiries of various sizes, on a variety of topics, with different partners/groups that I want shared with the class/world. If I go with a wiki, do students record their work on an individual page, a group page, a topic page, or something else? What would be nice would be if the elements on a page could be individually tagged by student, group, topic, method, etc. so that the content could be sorted and sifted in different ways. Students could see the range of their own work if they sort/sift it by their name. Groups could collect their work by sifting for their names and topic. Topical pages could be created by sifting for topics and/or subtopics. An online database would be the answer, but what databases have the ease of use, multimedia capabilities, and web2.0 nature of wikispaces?