I believe that people in the real world learn mostly through experience.  We learn through many different experiences.  It could be the experience of reading something in the newspaper or in a magazine.  It could also be the experience of watching someone else do something and then either following their lead or doing the opposite.  I know I personally learn a lot from watching what other people do.  However, I think we learn most from our own hands on/active experiences.  For example, think of something you learned to do as a child.  I’m going to use the example of riding a bike.  I didn’t learn how to ride a bike only by someone telling me what to do or by simply watching some else do it.  In order to really learn how to ride a bike I had to try it out for myself and maybe I didn’t get it right the very first time and that was okay.  Now even though I haven’t road a bike in years, I know I could get on a bike and still now how to ride it because I was actively involved in learning how to do this.  The point I’m trying to make is people learn best through activities they experience for themselves, so it should be our job as teachers to find/create activities that allow students to learn through their own experience, since this is a primarily the way we learn outside of school. 

In today’s world, where technology can be assessed easily at all times of the day, I think we rely on it a lot to learn.  We use it to answer questions that arise during a conversation.  I don’t know how many times I have been having a conversation with someone and someone asks question, and the other person will say that‘s a good question let me look it up on my phone. We use search engines to answer almost any question one can think of.  We also use technology to learn/ catch up on what our friends are doing in their lives through social networking.  Technology today is used to learn for a variety of topics ranging from what the weather forecast is going to be to actual research.  The two articles that really stuck out to me when preparing to write this blog were the quotes page and the New Literacy article that suggested that students writing might actually be improving since we live in a world where everyone is always communicating through “text”.  The author seems to think that this is enhancing students writing, however, if you read the comments left by readers of the blog most of them seem to not agree.  I thought that the author might actually have a valid point.  While many people see technology as hindering to the 21 century learner, I don’t see that as true as long as it is used in the proper ways.  Students today may feel that they are better able to express their thoughts through writing/typing since it is something almost every student does when they go home from school.  So we as teachers need to find technology resources that will enhance our students learning, through the technology they already use.  I especially liked this quote from flickr, “We must do more than teach students to surf the NET.  We must also teach them HOW TO MAKE WAVES.” --Scheiderman,   http://www.flickr.com/photos/carlaarena/5220177397/in/pool-858082@N25.  I think this quote basically speaks for its self, but it’s something I want to try and an do as a teacher.