Monday, June 25, 2007

Week 1: Tips from lifelong learners

My strongest learning habit is accepting responsibility for my learning. This has been extremely useful since May 29th, when I began an online summer school course in Criminal Law. The entire course is self-motivated! Being a college course, and being summer school, the workload is pretty heavy and tests are all taken online. So far I have a 96 average!

Another way I've developed this habit for learning is by asking for help. Once I amazed my neighbor when I told him that I'd called Finches to decribe a problem with my John Deere riding mower, and they solved the problem over the phone! I also like to learn by observing how others do manual tasks - this likely began by watching my mother in the kitchen.

The hardest habit is using technology to my advantage. I still don't quite trust it. Just last week, some friends used a Google map to come visit us in Vermont, and they went way off track because the directions told them to turn at a road which doesn't exist! Then there's the issue of crashes and lost information...but despite my suspicions, I know there is tremendous value in it, which is why I'm here doing this exercise.