Posts Tagged ‘ Geology ’

Informal learning as a paradigm for classroom learning suggests that learning is holistic, and is steeped in inclusiveness and connectedness.  As I suggested yesterday, John Dewey wrote about the importance of an “experiential education” more than 100 years ago, and his words are just as relevant today, as they were then.

For many years I co-taught a university course on environmental science and geology.  However, the course was a three-week “field” trip from Atlanta, Georgia to the Colorado Rocky Mountains.  In addition to fossil hunting in Kansas along our bus route, visiting museums in Denver, exploring the rocks and strata in the Rockies, observing wildlife at 10,000 feet, we spent several days in the backcountry backpacking and camping.  We couldn’t have provided a more informal science experience than three weeks in the Rocky Mountains.  During those trips, incidental learning was in greater supply than formal lessons—in fact, I am hard put to recall any formal lessons during these explorations of the West.  But I do remember returning and teaching courses in the Fall semester at Georgia State University and longing for the informality of learning that ignited the students (all teachers) in their quest for understanding environmental science and geology.… Read more