Making is the New Learning

Image Credit: curiocabinetspot

Posted by: Albert Weng

As reflected to the post of "Sharing is the New Teaching", to make something after the learning process shall be the purpose and new practice for all kinds of learning, no matter there's any kind of education took place.

The rationale behind the concept of "Making is the New Learning" comes from the question, "if you can't make anything useful, meaningful after you think you've learned a thing, nothing valuable happened in the universe."

Learning is not just "repeat"

In many of the subject learning, people who are studying or learning tend to repeat what's been written in the book and what's been instructed by the teacher or instructor. But, after the effort of trying to know the concept and knowledge from what's covered in the book and lecture, and the key focus to many people will be just following but without a second thought is simply to just memorize them all, and as much as they can, in order to determine the level of copy and paste capability they can do. But, wait a second, all of this has totally ignored one very crucial factor of mastering in any field, the comprehension. If one cannot comprehend the new thing they just trying to learn, how can they know when and how to use this new thing properly for themselves and for the people they live with?

Repeat is required, but not enough

When we know when and how to quote one's word, study properly and accurately in no time, it's very important when communicating with people for practical discussion in any field. Therefore, the capability to "repeat" the information or knowledge from any other source that you'd read earlier will definitely help. However, in such normal case we encounter everyday, the purpose of the "repeat" is not to "end of the discussion" as something great was discovered as a conclusion, definitely not, it actually is to "start the discussion" in a new way that would help inspire who were involved and to move on to an advanced progress for better.

Maker's Mind

People who think learning is important shall possess the "Maker's Mind" at all time to start from getting into the door of the domain throughout the process of knowledge building and live experience by your own hands and mind, thus in the end of the process, to make something to be examined or verified. The mind to truly make an output that's useful or meaningful, will then determine the level of the learning effort and also the contribution to the society after one has learned this new thing.