An Open Mind

Technology certainly has become essential for learning
and teaching. Moreover, it's constantly improving, making things easier and more accessible for everybody anywhere. This way we are able to download information and learn online "for free". The article "an open mind" is an example of the technological advance, this case with university courses that have access online. Although it costs money it's a good investment not only for current students but everybody for extended periods of time. The best part is, all the data collected can be modified,improved, updated according to new discoveries and so on. Thus, students also have an important role, they become active learners rather than students who "copy paste" thank to what others have said online. On the other hand, if we have free online courses, we might interfere with a regular process of getting a degree. The runner of this idea, Neeru Paharia, says that having a degree means that you have achieved a certain level, but the knowledge you develop at school can be the same as others who have studied the same topics on their own, just without the degree. The downside to the Open courseware is that this program relies only on online resources, meaning that human answers are hard to obtain. Although, P2PU seems to be better in that aspect where a group of people share what they know and help everybody. Either way, although there are people who might know more than someone who got a degree at school, that person still needs to be qualified by professionals, otherwise, we can't trust as a society.

Learning a new language (gram. and behaviorism)

I tried learning Chinese and in the phonetics lesson you can memorize
the symbols. It also provides with the definition in English which relies on the grammar translation method. I think it is quite useful since I don't know Chinese and I have never seen a symbol before. Thus, as a new learner I need the definition so I start relating the symbol with a meaning. Overall the website makes you repeat on and on the symbols as a drill, and it actually appears and disappears so one can practice and see if we can remember next time the meaning. This is more a behavioristic approach to learning, something like stimuli and response, especially since the colors of the symbols and letters are different in every language. I don't think this is the best way to learn a language as a communicative tool, but rather a way to learn vocabulary or memorize as drills the way we are supposed to write the symbols correctly, which is fine if we only want to learn some writing.

http://www.chinese-tools.com