What’s up by Miluska Ojeda

Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn.
Benjamin Franklin

How strong and true is this statement? I remember very well concepts that I have been taught by really involving me and my fellow students when we were only 6 or 7 years old. I don’t remember a single word of the explanations but we learned perfectly what chlorophyll photosynthesis is because we tested and observed it with our own eyes, we saw what happened if we obscured portions of leaves with black cardboard, testing it for ourselves.

Education does not only involve children, we are all involved.
In the world of work, it is useful to get your hands dirty during ad hoc and safe events such as jams, challenges, hackathons, in order to deal with your skills. At a higher level of commitment we can enable people to work on real projects to test themselves and learn a whole set of knowledge that can only be learned by working in a real context, without simulations. Obviously this cannot be done without criteria and seriousness, because the person who has to learn risks coming up against too big challenges, compromising the quality of the project and the final value, as well as the feeling of being abandoned to themselves.

One of the possible ways is to do pair work, I found it valuable both for myself and for other people. Doing pair work is like when you are small and you have to learn to walk, you do it with your legs but you are not left alone, you have guides and the right stimuli to give your best, you’ll fall, but the damage is contained because the support is always there. You are not alone but it does not stop you from learning even if sometimes you will struggle.

This article was first published in our Cocooners N° 6