A Few Lessons on the Slow Process of Learning

Michael McVey was giving a tutorial on Google Earth and showing its aerial views to his education students at the University of Arizona years ago when one of them asked, “Is this live?”

It’s a question that has stuck with McVey all these years because it conveyed something technology has created: an expectation of immediacy. And he has seen that expectation creep into learning. “People use technology to hasten what they think is learning,” he says. He’s now an education professor at Eastern Michigan University.
To illustrate, McVey talks about his own experience with language-learning apps. As an experiment, he completed several courses in foreign languages to see what he could learn. The answer: not much. He also talks about his experience using a drone to try to create a seasonal video montage of his neighborhood. It took more than a few takes.

Technology, he said, provides a good start toward learning skills but it can’t replace slow process of learning.

His experience has taught him a few things about learning.
• Slow down.
• Expect obstacles.
• Create in a private space.
• Avoid the dull dread of grades.

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