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Involve Me And I Learn

Posted on May 17, 2014 by Lubica Misevski

We have all heard this quote “ Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn.”

I would like to emphasize the last point again “involve me and I learn.” If you take a moment and think about how you learn, and when you have retained information the best, was it not through involvement? To illustrate this point, let's look at learning to drive.

For those reader based elsewhere, I will be using the model by which we learn to drive in Australia. If you are 16 years old, you can then sit a written test, know as the Driver Knowledge Test. You can only sit the test once you have read the “road users handbook," and the guide on “getting your driver's license.”

Once you pass this test, you are then given a “Learner Driver Log Book," and you have to log a minimum of 120 hours driving with a parent or instructor. You also need to be over 17, and held your learner license for a minimum of 12 months. Only then can you attempt to move onto your provisional license.

So if we think about this for a second, and use the above proven model when applied to our children’s learning? We will note that the majority of the time should be spent in the doing, whilst combining the written knowledge of others experience with action.

I think it can be safely said that we all learn more rapidly and completely if we are doing something. This necessitates the need to learn.

In an experiment by the “One Laptop Per Child Organization." They dropped off tablet computers with programmed applications to Ethiopian Villages to see what would happen.

The goal was to see if illiterate kids with no previously exposure to written words could learn how to read by themselves. These children could experiment with the tablet and its preloaded alphabet training games, e-books, movies, cartoons, paintings, and other programs.

Within five days they were using 47 apps per child, per day. Within 2 two weeks they were singing ABC songs in the village, and within five months they had hacked the Android, to turn the camera on that had accidentally been disabled. Each kid customized the desktop to suit him or herself, even though this too had been disabled.

You see Negopronte who leads this organisation felt, “if they could learn to read, the could read to learn." He has stated “what can we do for these 100 million kids around the world who don’t go to school?" Can we change the paradigm so they may learn too?

Our children learn through doing, and as the above story illustrates, the combination of reading and action can produce unbelievable results. We can learn to drive, but more importantly our children can learn to learn.

Posted in child education, Early child education, zero to five