Unfortunately this was the story with Dr. Verena Roberts this morning in our Tech Education class as technical difficulties made the online video connection our class had with her cut out every time she was expanding on a point.  The experience was frustrating because content was lost and the flow was interrupted which made understanding her and learning from her difficult however I still gleaned some key points from the discussion and she did provide her slides for us to peruse at our leisure.  Not that any of us have any actual leisure time to spend perusing this late in the term.

Dr. Roberts emphasized the importance of open access to learning opportunities  and expanding learning beyond the walls of the classroom.  She posited that for learning to happen reflection is key and that an open learning design consists of four major stages.

  1.   building relationships
  2. co-designing learning pathways
  3. how will students show their learning?
  4. students build their own personal learning network

 

An important point moving forward –> encourage students to find and build the learning for themselves (the basic premise of inquiry).

Below is an outline for moving high school students towards a more open learning framework.  This is crucial because in order to support passion for learning in students, self-directed inquiry is necessary.