Learning diaries

Having read about learning diaries in those three German sources supplied by Dr. Weber-Wulff...

• Lerntagebuch by ZUM-Wiki
• Kooperatives Lernen und Publizieren: Lerntagebücher?
• Lerntagebücher als Werkzeug für selbstorganisiertes Lernen

...I got to the idea of using an inherited version of them for the client's work I do for a living.

So, I'll try to apply clients reviews in which I summarize what went well and wrong. With the help of that I try to sharpen my objective thinking and improve the way I approach clients and their work.

I will deal with Bloom's taxononmy in a future post but what I can see now is that the Lerntagebebuch is missing the psychomotor skills, i.e. what you do with your hands. So when talking about KSA (Knowledge, Skills, Attitude) in Bloom's taxonomy, Skills are missing in the Lerntagebuch template I mentioned before.

Learning diaries like SCRUM

If you think about it, learning diaries are of the same pattern as the daily standup meetings using SCRUM - an agile software development approach. You tell your colleagues about the things you accomplished, you had problems with and the ones which will come up in the next (or two) week(s). That's cool and crazy! :)

I think the Lerntagebuch template by the Institut für Schulentwicklungsforschung (IFS) Dortmund helps me with my further entries in this learning diary. Though, I must admit that I feel like a Grundschüler again - but never used a Lerntagebuch in primary school, as far as I can remember (except from the non-school diary, of course). ;)

Also, I remember that we had to write reports every week in my internship in school and my apprenticeship after school. Can't say exactly if it helped me afterwards, but I liked writing it - so it was not so much a pain as it is for others, I guess. :)

Take-away

So, for the next Monday sessions where we have physical meetings I'll try to follow those steps by Johannes Kepler Universität Linz Institut für Pädagogik und Psychologie:

• Take general notes in the lesson.
• Take learning diary notes immediately after the lesson (about 1/2 to 1 DIN A4 sheet).
• Recap the most important content (active repitition).

• Formulate in your own words (establishes a personal connection):
• e.g. by agreeing and disagreeing with a reason.
• e.g. by creating connecting to personal experiences.
• e.g. by describe own ideas.
• e.g. by developing own solution proposals.

• Take down what you didn't understand by formulating a question - to be solved in the next lesson.
• Judge the lesson - by grading your participation and your learning process & progress with a reason.

I feel like I'm learning (how to learn) again - or I feel like I'm studying again, in the traditional sense of dealing with a topic by contemplating, reflecting and evaluating.

Learning typography

Quelle: Fontblog - Warum Steve Jobs ein Kontrollfreak war

As I not only want to learn about didaktics in the media context, but typography as a side topic, I found and become fond of a tool named KernType, the kerning game. I tried it twice. With my first attempt I achieved 75 points. The second try resulted in 95 out of 100, which is good motivation to continue working on that subject! :)

As it's written in the image above, the kerning game is »part of Method of Action, an online course to help programmers learn design.«

At the risk of sliding into "off-topic" I found the founder's philosophy very interesting. They say:

Information ≠ knowledge

Knowledge is acquired by actually doing things and reflecting upon it. Proactively thinking about how you can improve what you did.

There is second application called Shape Type, the letter shaping game. It's more complex with regard to time. Therefor, I will learn & play it later. :)

Time spent: 4h