The other day, my daughter asked me an interesting question. She said, "Do you remember the things that you got wrong the first time, and then corrected, better than you remember the things that you didn't make a mistake on?" I thought about it and realized my answer was, yes, I do remember things better when I've struggled to learn them. My daughter said this was true for her as well. This reminded me of the slightly annoying optimists who tell us that we should think of our mistakes as "learning opportunities." The reasoning behind the platitude is simple: if you don't make any mistakes, you won't learn anything new.
If this is true, if a process of trial-and-error is beneficial, then what does this say about the role of teachers and students? For example, if we as students are given simple, step-by-step procedures for using a preselected set of tools to create our archives, blogs, and portfolios, does that diminish what we learn or remember? Is it possible that a "spoon-fed" approach might inhibit, rather than promote, our learning? I'm not suggesting that I wouldn't prefer to be shown how to do things, to spend less time wrestling with tools and more time developing my portfolio content and presentation, but the question still interests me. What do I gain from flailing around in the technological waters, learning from my mistakes? Or, from another perspective, am I doing my son (or other students) a disservice if I "rescue" them from their frustation too soon, showing them how to do things they might have figured out on their own if given more time?
