Monday, July 8th

Today we had several discussions about defining education and learning. Although I am majoring in elementary education, I realized that I had never been asked to define the terms "education" or "learning", up until this point. I was surprised that this process was harder than I had expected. The definitions I came up with were the following:

Education: The process of society imparting skills, knowledge, and values to others.

Learning: The acquisition of new skills, knowledge, and values.

Before researching a bit online, my definitions for these two words ended up being quite similar. However, through research and discussions in class, I reached an understanding that the term education implies the transmission of culture, and most often involves planning, and a curriculum. In contrast, learning is an internal process which takes place individually.

We also brainstormed interactive activities, and discussed how the presence of feedback is an essential component that makes an activity interactive. Some examples we came up with were charades, interactive Smartboard games, and a classroom game where a ball is passed between a group of children who share a word which pertains to a certain topic.

In the next couple of weeks, I look forward to discover how to use and implement various technological tools which I will hopefully be able to utilize in my future classroom.