Learning by Design

The "learning by design" model described by Koehler and Mishra is clearly an advancement of the typical methods undertaken by teachers and pre-service teachers in professional development exercises. While we have often been influenced to merely learn the basics of technology, and resigned to the constraint therein, the learning by design approach dictates that a more profound and beneficial process results. Facets of this technique, such as collaboration, problem-solving, and intensive involvement, offer teachers and prospective teachers the opportunity to not only learn how to effectively integrate technology, but also how to pass on such skills to their students, which is obviously vital.

Admittedly, many of my own classroom experiences have been hampered by a relative deficiency in technological skills, which has prevented me from being able to fully explore the advantages of classroom integration. I am improving, however, and many of the issues from the article parallel the trial-and-error qualities of creating my home page, which is still a bit of a sad work in progress. Although the dominant role of collaboration has been lacking in this activity, constructing the home page has forced me to learn many skills from scratch, slowly, rather than merely being reliant on lecture notes or textbook nonsense. This is representative of a design problem from the article, "Designing is a Holistic Skill," and it has certainly been useful to experience the process firsthand. I know that this will be highly productive in my classroom, as I now will be a much more confident guide for my students when they are faced with similarly challenging tasks. This is the most important aspect of the learning by design approach: developing an experiential understanding of the obstacles that they will certainly encounter and the frustration produced by them, as well as being much more adept at scaffolding their efforts throughout difficult lessons. Good news for me...and for them.