More will be added but here are the first few thoughts.
1) Failures most often come before you have learned all that you needed to learn in order to have a success. This should not prevent you from trying anyway. Take into account the cost of a failure. NASA does not like failures because of the high cost. The medical field does not like failures because of the cost to the patients. So they find ways to test their theories before putting them into practice. I do not really want to describe what those failures look like, which is also the reason I would not dissect the frog in class. Don’t want to say that some things are better left unknown, but it surely wasn’t me that was going to find out. The point is seeing how something does not work can be a huge learning step to understanding how it does work. Many people who are famous for creating, inventing, writing, or designing something will describe how many times they failed and how much they learned along the way. Another great example is athletics. For every great play that you see, there were hundreds of failed attempts before it.
2. Learn how you learn. Making mistakes can be a powerful method of learning really big lessons. Pretty sure that most of us have a story of something funny we did and can say that we now know better than to do that the same way we did it the first time. Like the time I tried to hold myself from the rings using only my feet. Fortunately, I did not hurt myself (and no one saw it) but the physics I was envisioning did not hold true as I planned it. It is likely that this is not the preferred method for learning.
The rest of my entries here will be different ways to learn, so examining which of them are ways you seem to benefit the most from can help you make some choices when it comes to learning other areas. I know the learning styles tests help us see our most prominent style, but that does not always help us make the choice to learn when we experience input from one of those styles. In fact, thinking about why you answered the questions on those tests may be more helpful than the results of the test. Especially those questions where you say that you could have picked more than one answer.
3. Learning can take place in everything we do. There are things that we decide to do so we need to learn to be successful at it. I have learned about gardening, putting up dry wall, repairing a car, and carpentry. People who work where you are buying supplies are willing to share expertise, and I am even going to say especially those with gray hair. One of the best resources in our lifetimes will be our parents, who occasionally cross the line and try to tell us how to do everything, but it is worth asking them about the things we know they did.
One reason I enjoy my phone games is because I look to become a student of the game. If I find I cannot get the best troops in the game unless I spend money, I move on to the next game. The learning in my games helps me progress in the game faster than others, giving me a sense of joy when I emerge with small victories leaving others wondering how that little guy (or old guy) did that.
We learn in any traveling that we do. There are always ways to learn about the area we are visiting. First, by the people who live there, such as the relatives or friends that we are visiting. If we do not know anyone there, then it is easy to learn from the people we encounter, any workers we come across. People love to share what they know about their own area, so find the ones who have pride in being there to get the most information.
4. Old dogs can learn new tricks. I would say I bought into this statement much of my life and would be impressed when older people told me that they started something new or began an activity that they had not tried. Straight up truth though is that I witnessed an old dog learn something new. My dog had never been allowed on the furniture, and simply did not try to go up there. That is until when she was 9 years old my mother-in-law came for a visit with her puppy. It was a chihuahua and spent more time being held than on the ground. Once the visit was over, I came down the stairs the next morning to hear my dog jump down from the couch to greet me. I then spent the next week trying to train her again that the couch was not part of her territory.
I am not young but have taken up several new activities that I now enjoy. This is not to say that I am retired and now have time to do things that I did not have the time for previously. I did have the opportunity which I did not have before. I have taken up both archery and trail biking since I live close to both, neither of which I had been able to do more than once or twice. As a teacher with over 25 years of experience, I have done something the last two years which I had never done before. I made my class paper-less. It would have been so much easier to continue to pull out my worksheets from a very large collection and copy them for each daily lesson rather than type all of my lessons into a new program as I am doing now. It was, however, well worth the time in learning this new style of which I can still learn how best to incorporate all of the valuable teaching methods which I previously used.
5. Learning by observing. Be awake is a phrase I have heard. For me it means that we cannot learn from observing if we do not take moments to observe. The word observe is a verb, an action word. Many people look, but they do not see. Something I often do is look up the meaning of words that I come across. Observe means to notice something, or specifically look at something. One can be accidental, the other is a choice, but both require thought in the moment to become an observation.
Going to say here that besides observing, picking the brain of anyone who seems an expert is highly valuable. I went to a conference and was the only teacher there. The rest of the attendees were administrators. During the break I noticed all of them on their computers or phones, busy taking care of work back at their schools. I went up and talked with the presenter and got the best information that he did not share during the group presentation. He talked about his research, how he learned what he was sharing, and clarified what was most important during the process I would experience in putting his work in to practice.
Doc Dave DeWitt 