I never try to teach my students anything.
I never try to teach my students anything. I only try to create an environment in which they can learn.
Albert Einstein
It’s pretty easy to be taken by flights of fancy.
Probably ever since man had an imagination and a concept of future time there were those that had promising visions of varying focus. Maybe these people thought about: new agricultural techniques, new social organizations, better medicine or more efficient heating technologies. People, some visionaries, would ponder these things relative to their time and the technologies available to them and come up with solutions.
Currently, in the realm of educational technology there is room to be taken in by certain visions, technologies and the general direction of educational technology. Surely this can be good. Being taken by ideas can be a passionate enterprise. Maybe even like being in love, where your world takes on a new ‘feel’ and the common is seen in a new light.
Common Sense Learning Principles has nothing to do with seeing the world in a new light. It has more to do with coming back to earth. Away from passions and visions and flights of fancy and remembering what we already know works. This kind of effort is needed probably more often than we give it credit. Sometimes it’s a hard thing to do. It’s like telling a friend with a crazy business idea that maybe he needs to get a grip on things before he starts running around willy-nilly tossing money all over the place.
But people have been learning for what now, 4 million years? 20,000 maybe? We’ve learned quite a bit about learning in that span of time: We learn well in groups, we like to explore when we learn, we like to play games and so on. Common Sense Learning Principles is about these things; it’s about getting back to basics, what we already know works and how to apply it to the new environments we’re creating for ourselves.
