Imagine you're hiking up a mountain
Unless your a masochist, you are probably hiking because you are looking for a unique view at the top. There are lots of obstacles along the way. There are plenty of twists and turns in the path. And, if your experiences are anything like mine, there are some surprises (good and bad) that have happened to you on your climb.
The problem is that if you do not video the actual climb, but just take a picture from the mountain view, you lose all of the experience of climbing the mountain. You cannot effectively communicate to someone else what happened on your way to the top because...
...those lessons are invisible from the top!
As part of the reflection that we are trying to bring about in our courses, we are going to require the students to produce a Journey of Learning Narrative (JOLN) for each and every course.
The best way to do this is to keep noting any of the various epiphanies that you are experiencing along the way. This will make completing the final narrative at the end a mere compilation of your recognition of lessons learned.
A Journey of Learning Narrative will comprise the student's goals for the course, the biggest learning experiences, the changes that they have had to make in their accomplishments, the reasons for those changes, the dead ends that they thought were going to go somewhere but didn't, etc.
This document serves to put their accomplishments in context. It also serves to help them to be lifelong learners by looking at the things that did or did not work, and try to duplicate them in other areas of their adult lives.
The problem is that if you do not video the actual climb, but just take a picture from the mountain view, you lose all of the experience of climbing the mountain. You cannot effectively communicate to someone else what happened on your way to the top because...
...those lessons are invisible from the top!
As part of the reflection that we are trying to bring about in our courses, we are going to require the students to produce a Journey of Learning Narrative (JOLN) for each and every course.
The best way to do this is to keep noting any of the various epiphanies that you are experiencing along the way. This will make completing the final narrative at the end a mere compilation of your recognition of lessons learned.
A Journey of Learning Narrative will comprise the student's goals for the course, the biggest learning experiences, the changes that they have had to make in their accomplishments, the reasons for those changes, the dead ends that they thought were going to go somewhere but didn't, etc.
This document serves to put their accomplishments in context. It also serves to help them to be lifelong learners by looking at the things that did or did not work, and try to duplicate them in other areas of their adult lives.
