John Seely Brown Lecture: Learning in the Digital Age

Everyone seemed to be advocating the need to incorporate technology into education. 

Watching this video prompted me these questions: 

1. Did we, as human beings ever stopped learning?

    Couldn't help but had the feeling that we fear that we are not learning enough, fast enough. 

2. Is our human mind any different compared to the past?

3. Why are we advocating the need to change the approach towards T&L? Did the fundamental way of how people a couple hundreds years ago learn different from the way we are learning now?

Yes, I do know theories about Behaviorism, Cognitivism and Constructivism in learning approaches. But it now strikes me that I do not know about how human beings learn. How did we learn during stone age? How did we learn during the medieval age? How did we learn about all there is to be throughout the evolution of mankind? Suddenly found myself interested to know the very history of human learning. It's amusing to find that as a teacher, I do not know how people learn. Strangely enough, these questions seems to be related to the topic on History + Evolution of instructional technology that I'm assigned to discuss. This assignment could not have come more timely. 

But I'll like to point one thing: With so much of emphasis on learning through the gaining & constructing knowledge & practical skills, it needs to be balanced off with the emphasis on cultivating the right attitudes, mindset and noble values. Just take the simple example of trust. Nowadays, there are trust issues of the people towards their leaders/government, of civilian towards the police force, of parents towards their children, of parents towards teachers, and of teachers towards students. I have to admit that from years of teaching, I've been slowly conditioned not to trust my students. Not trusting what they said are true but double checking with their parents... Not trusting that they can take good care of themselves when left unattended... Not trusting that they will do the right things... I realised that I'm not emphasising enough to my students to gain trust from others.


I'm a strong believer that every contemporary approach needs to be complemented with ancient wisdom.

We are gifted the ability to learn. But why? For what purpose(s)?