We are born to learn

While I was exploring the Infinite Learning materials in Modules 11 & 12, I was first drawn to the concept of “Learning Everywhere” and then to “Library as Classroom” thinking that they would give me suggestions for how to expand learning opportunities in the library and for my community. Many of the readings connect to those topics I have marked as “Directors Brief? Comp O?” and they are serving as my inspiration for that assignment.

I then moved on to listening to the lecture for the “Professional Learning Experiences” section of the module and when I went to that page I fell in love with the following quote.

“We are born to learn, but somewhere along the way many of us pick up the idea that we must be taught in order to learn………….We must regain our sense of wonder and our desire to learn.”   — R.Tennant, “Strategies for Keeping Current,” Library Journal, 9/15/2003, p.28.

In further exploration of the module I hit upon the article by Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic (2015) which discussed the ways in which a person’s personality determines the ways in which they learn. I would place myself in the following categories:

Deep Learners:

• intellectually curious
• open to new experiences
• aesthetically sensitive
• sensation-seeking
• “intrinsically motivated” and prefer immersing themselves in the learning experience
• tend to lose sense of time when they’re learning, and they’re generally interested in a variety of topics

Hungry Mind:

• generally more interested in learning than others
• gravitate toward books, keep up with current events, and enjoy solving brain-teasers and puzzles
• they know what they don’t know and think of those deficits as knowledge gaps they’re always striving to fill—which keeps them asking “why?”

When I finished my first graduate degree in Speech Pathology and Audiology I said I was “done with school”. At that point I had been going non-stop for 17 years, beginning when I was not yet 5 years old. Soon after I began my professional career the head of my agency introduced me to joys of “going to Convention” (interestingly in the speech world we always refer to it as a “convention” but in the library world it’s a “conference” – a “conference” in the speech world is typically a one day event as opposed to the longer multi-day events). Over the years I have become affiliated with a number of professional organizations in both the speech and library worlds. As I spoke to in a previous blog, “we are all parts of a greater whole” and I have found networking through these educational opportunities to be an essential aspect of feeling joined to that greater whole.

I whole-heartedly agree with the findings of both Michael Stephens (2018) and Holly Clark (2019) regarding ongoing professional development. Over the years I have found that I have gained much more useful information from shorter presentations at conferences/conventions than I have at all day trainings. Invariably the speaker spends the majority of the day giving background information and the results of research studies and then rushes through the real “meat” of the presentation which are the real world applications we are hoping to take home with us. I fully take advantage of on-demand webinars ($99/year for open access to everything available on SpeechPathology.com and free access on edWeb for all things education and library related). Recently I was able to brush up on evaluation of stuttering the night before doing an evaluation by watching a one-hour webinar.

Forced opportunities for mentorship were not as successful as when people have been given the opportunity to seek out a mentor when needed. At our quarterly speech department meetings we typically set aside time for “sharing” where people are invited to either ask for suggestions from the rest of the department or share relevant information from an education opportunity they attended. In this way we can mentor each other in a more natural way.

Our library system has done well with providing trainings that are regionally based and hands-on when teaching specific technology based skills. Quarterly meetings at the system level bring together members from the 33 libraries to share information.

The “23 Things” initiative reminded me of the way INFO 203 is structured and I found that to be immensely helpful in getting introduced to the skills needed to participate in the online learning environment.

As my library has begun to expand into offering more adult programs, I recently served as a presenter and facilitator at 2 technology based programs. Without realizing it, I was trying to build “New Media Literacies” (USC Annenberg, 2013) amongst the attendees such as encouraging them to

• “play” (experiment as a form of problem solving)
• use “distributed cognition” (interact meaningfully with tools that expand mental capacities)
• share “collective intelligence” (pool knowledge and compare notes with others toward a common goal)
• use “judgment” (evalute the reliability and credibility of different information sources)
• develop “transmedia navigation” (follow the flow of stories and information across multiple media)
• use “visualization” (translate information into visual models and understand the information visual models are communicating)

Having taught those sessions is leading me toward considering taking INFO 250 – Design and Implementation of Instructional Strategies for Information Professionals in an upcoming semester.

References:

Blowers, H. (2006). About the Learning 2.0 project.

Chamorro-Premuzic, T. (2015). How your personality determines how you learn.

Clark, H. (n.d.). The essentials of great PD: How educators are reimagining professional learning.

Stephens, M. (2018). Personal, Actionable, Accessible

USC Annenberg. (2013). Create circulate connect collaborate.