In this task
Watch this video
http://ed.ted.com/lessons/how-to-learn-from-mistakes-diana-laufenberg#watch
Then, answer these questions in a form of a comment of at least 25 lines.
What do you think about teacher allowing, even encouraging, students to fail as part of the learning process? Is this a good idea or a bad idea?
Diana Laufenberg says that allow students fail is good for learning process? How failure may contribute to your students' learning process?
What was your favorite homework assignment? What made it your favorite? Did it involve experiential learning?
Think about a time you failed at something. Do you think you learned more when you tried to do it again the next time?
Post your comment.
Due date: December 8th
I think that allowing students to fail is a good idea, because when you forget that there is a wrong and a right answer your mind starts to work without pressure, letting out all the creativity and you start creating new solutions to the problems. When students have choose an answer, without space to fail and without second chances, they are not really learning, because I think that the real learning comes by yourself, by trying things, solutions, new ideas and when you know that when you fail you can try again; you have made some mistakes but are never going to do them again because you already learn, for yourself, that are incorrect.
ResponderBorrarFor me, when teachers allow students to fail, they are really encouraging them to try over and over again until they really learn how to solve the problems by themselves, and this kind of learning is better because they will never forget this things because they have learned them by themselves and not by reading a book and choosing a correct or wrong answer.
The real enemy of learning is the fear to fail, when students are under pressure because once they give their answer, there not will be a new chance. If they have a wrong answer, they maybe just forget the problem and will never look for the real answer, because now that is not graded they stop caring about it; and if they have it right, they probably will forget how to solve it because they were prepared only for a test, not for the life; they release all the pressure in one test and also stop caring about it once they receive the grade. The real learning comes by failing, when you learn from your mistakes and try again until you get a solution, which is a more satisfaction experience than just learning for a test.
I can’t really a remember an experience in school or high school that had involved experiential learning, but the best example of his effectiveness is that the ordinary things, like how to drive a car, how to cook or just how to write, are the things that I never forget because I have learned them by failing and trying again.
I'm actually sure that allowing students to fail as part of the learning process is a really good idea, because they will try to do the things by themselves thinking in diferents ways to get to right answer, and even if the answer is not ok, the brain will not forget the steps that they took before, and the next time, they will not made the same mistakes again.
ResponderBorrarDiana Laufenberg is in favor with the idea of let the students fail and she has good arguments to defend her position, I'm agree with her but I think in other facts to improve that kind of learning.
If the students work in groups trying to give solutions for one specific problem, if all of them fail, they will know as diferents ways to don't do that as many of partners are. For instance, when you are studying math, when you have the answer; you are determine to drive yourselve in that specific way, and is posible that you will never know that there is a easiest way to solve the problem.
What I'm trying to say is that students don't need to think in the same form that teachers, and it doesn't mean that they are wrong.
I remember one assingment of the course of physics III, when the teacher Alberto Aguero ask to us to discovered the maximum height that is possible to pump water in TEC, so I had to go to the laboratory of physics and ask for the exactly force of gravity in TEC, and in the moment that I got that number I went to my house and I did the calculus based in the physics of fluids, at the end I found that the maximum heigt is 10.34 meters, the interesting fact is that if you were in the top of a building with that height and if there is a glass of water in the ground, you would drink that water from that height with just a straw and with the normal force in your mouth that you apply to drink something as you always do.
For the last question I could say that when I lose my first course of career I learned a lot for the next time that I tried it, and I also got a 98 points in one exam the second time thay I took the course.
I am totally agree with that teacher encourage their students to fail. Because is there where we see the mistakes that we had and then the solution than we have to apply, in orden to avoid that mistake again. Is true that when a person fails in something, when it do ti again, it will do better. Also, we learn better a lesson or something else that we are learning when we fails, but not only that, to do it right, we have to identify the solution and take advantage of the fail.
ResponderBorrarFail is important in the learning process, but not just there is important, in other fields of life is important too. The entrepreneurship, for example. When you create your own business, you have a lot of risks that can provoke that your company don't do it well. The mortality rate of a start up is like 90%. That means that is too possible that you fail when you create your own company, but when your try again, you will do it better, and get success.
For my own experience, during my five year in the university, I have fail sometimes. In a course, in a exam or in a project, sometimes I fail, but the important thing here is that I get the lessons of that experiences and when I have to face it again, I will try to don't do the same wrong thing again. Applying that during our life we will success in whatever we do.
In engineering, that is my field by the way, every day we have to face the possibility of fail. So as engineers, we have use to the possibility of fail and don't see it as something terrible, rather than, we have sometimes, love fail in the things that we do, because those mistakes are the most valuable lessons that we could have.
Learn process
ResponderBorrarIn my personal life, I always have thought that even when people tell you what the correct way to do something is, you should do what you think the correct way is. I support this because, again, in my personal experience if you keep doubts about something, you will feel uncomfortable. But through the years, I have heard people say that when they commended mistakes, they learned, and this is what the speaker is talking about. In summary, when you learned the way that doesn´t work, you are closest to know the right way to do that things works. So I think that a good technique to teach is make that students be wrong in order to show what they don´t have to do.
Once I heard that when someone asked to Thomas Alba Edison, who invented the electric light bulb, how he did his invention he says that he learned 99 ways how don´t do an electric light bulb. This is important, because express how the failure can help to students do something; and it is important too because shows how the persistence can help to come true the objectives in our life. Actually, Thomas A. Edison also said: “The successful is 1% inspiration and 99% transpiration”.
One of the most interesting way to teach, using the possibility of the failure in the process, is make students do something by their own, in order to use the learned. Being at university, once I had to build a galena radio, which consist in an old radio system that don´t need batteries. It was a pretty interesting assignment. I need to apply what I knew about the radio system, and fixed how make that works. I studied a lot the theoretical part, but even this, I couldn´t made that the radio works. But I can promise that I learned a lot about the galena radio system.
I think that even when you make mistakes, you are learning. Actually after fail something you can try it again and make it better. I had troubles with a course, and I had to repeat it three times. In my defense I can say that the first time there weren´t way in which I could follow the teacher classes, so I decided let lose. The second time I tried more hard, but it wasn´t enough. But the third time that I tried I can say that all things was spectacularly incredible.
Failing is a part of the educational process; in fact people learn more when they fail than when they do the things correctly for the first time so I think it is a good idea to allow students to fail and learn about their mistakes than given them the correct answer in the first try. These because when you give a student a problem with multiple choice, they will answer it by memory, trying to remember what they study or they will choose an answer randomly and this isn’t learning it is just exercising the student’s memory.
ResponderBorrarOn the other hand, when a teacher gives an assignment that involves investigation and encourages students to think, they put more effort and try to solve the problem by themselves or ask someone for help instead of giving a quick answer just for pass the course. As a student, I have confirmed that we learn more in a project than in an exam, because when we’re developing a project we use all of the knowledge we acquired in class in the real life, which is more interesting than just staying with the theorical facts. Besides, the project not always works at the first time so students must check all the work and tries to find what is wrong and fixed it, this is what learning by the hard way means because you notice that you have made a mistake and why it was made, so you will not do it again. This type of learning is what multiple choice exams do not give to the students because they just have one try to answer correctly.
During my four years of university one of my favorite assignments was to develop a circuit that measures the electrical conductivity in different types of aluminum. What made this project one of my favorites was the fact that my team and I have to found a company that have an equipment to do that measurement we were going to study so we visited Coopesa in order to understand and learn more about the equipment and how it’s used. The project involved experiential learning because we have to analyzed our data and take the measurements more than once in order to get what we really want, so it was very interesting and we were able to enlarge the knowledge we have received in the course.
In different experiences I have had where I have failed, I am aware that I learn more when I redo the assignment than if I do it just one time. For example when I failed a course last year and take it again in summer I understand all the topics I wasn’t able to comprehend the first time, so it is actually true that you learn more when you have failed at something because you put more effort in order to reach the goal at the next try.
I think it would be great, today all learning processes are mostly only about let people memorize something that already exist or something that somebody else once discovered. It would be useful to allow students to fail as part of the learning process as long as students take responsibility knowing that is part of learning and don’t fail because they don’t care about. The question that if this is this a good idea or a bad idea just depends of that type of works teachers would assign and the kind of students.
ResponderBorrarI have always thought that since we are in school, all society including parents, teachers and everyone else, teach us that if you fail you´re a looser, that failure is bad, we should succeed in everything we launch, but the most ironic thing is that a most of the people we think were successful, failed a lot of times before they became famous. Let see for example Steve Jobs, he was fired of his own company, he tried again. Thomas Alva Edison when he invented the light bulb he had failed more than a thousand times, one man asked him if he didn´t feel like a looser for have failed so many times, he answered that every time he failed he was happier because he was one step closer to do it, he had just found more than one thousand ways of what he shouldn’t be doing, Henry Ford failed many times too, as we can see, the people that changed the world into what we have and consider as normal, failed many times. I don’t think I have a favorite assignment, but I like projects where we have to find companies and apply the knowledge we got in class, because that’s what we´ll do as engineers.
I have failed many times and I´ll be failing during all my life. All of us fell many times when we were kids learning how to ride a bike, we probably have scars of that, but the point is that if we wouldn´t have fallen we wouldn´t have learned, we fell as part of the learning process. I have a saying, “The stronger the fall, the more impressive my return”.
I think it’s important that teachers help their students when they fail so they can see it as a part of the learning process. I have failed also. When I was in school and high school I used to get very good grades until I came to the university. Here, in my first semester I failed two courses of programming and I started to feel bad, asking myself if that was really the career that I like. Then, I remembered the words that one of my teachers said to us: “most of you are used to get good grades in high school and didn’t fail courses, but here you will know what failure is and maybe you will feel sad and disappointed, but that’s part of the learning process and you need to carry on with your dreams, everything that you do can’t be perfect always because we aren’t perfect”. Those words encouraged me and here I am, finishing my second year studying here. I think that all the teachers should be like him, because teachers often do feel bad students when they fail their course instead if encouraging them to continue and don’t give up. So, I’m in favor of supporting the students when they fail, but against of making pessimistic students that always fail using the previous reason as excuse. In my case, failure helps me a lot because I learned that in your life sometimes everything is good and sometimes not.
ResponderBorrarMy favorite homework assignment was to create a computer program that makes figures. It’s my favorite because I’ve finished it, thing that I didn’t the first time I coursed programming.
In my case, when I have failed, I learned more when I tried to do it again. Maybe you learn more the second time because you know what you are going to do and where you have failed. For example, in a course if you don’t understand a topic but there’s another topic that’s not difficult to you, the next time you can focus in the topic that you didn’t understand and you can also enjoy the process, well I did.
So, when you fail doing something, don’t give up and do it again until you finish it.
Studies have shown that people who fail more often learn better than those who always get their goal at the first time, as an example when people are practicing for a math exam and they do the first exercise good they usually stop practicing because they think they can do any exercise now, but that is highly incorrect, and in my opinion when people are use to always win at first then when the time comes to fail is very common that they are not use to that so they don't know how to handle that. Using all of this as a base I can say that I'm totally pro about this topic because fail is not only a part of study is also a part of life and we have to know how to confront it so we can be prepare for any situation or also it teaches us that there is always a way to figure out things even if it is kind of difficult, impossible is nothing in life.
ResponderBorrarOne thing that for me is very important at the time that I'm doing some exercises is that when I figure out some exercise that has been giving me a very hard time for a long period of time that causes me to be proud of myself so that gives me confidence and I feel like nothing can beat me, and that is one of the most important things that I believe failing contributes to people who keep fighting with their studies.
My favorite assignment as an student was at mi first year of university, I have to program a game simple but big at the same time and is my favorite because I was just learning how to program so it gave me a very hard time but at the end I made it and was only by me so it made me feel so proud of my job and i got a very high note so even better for me and my pride and of course it was experimental.
I learned more when I finished the assignment but when I did it many times it gave me experience little by little so at the end every little thing I did gave me experience that combined helped me to complete the job. Also was very difficult because you have to fight when the desire of giving up comes to you that is when you learned the most, so you know you have the ability to continue fighting instead of giving up.
It is a good idea, actually I have a similar idea, because now we have free access to everything, if we are interested to know about an specific topic the only thing we have to do is to look after on a website. That is why I also think that teachers should give students appropriate tools for how to use this information correctly with involves different kinds of projects, experience their own learning…and this kind of learning allow students to fail, to learn of their fail and do it much better the next time.
ResponderBorrarThe failure, according to Diana, give students more opportunity to learn from their own experiences even if they could read an entire book of the subject
I do not remember an specific homework assignment that I liked, it can be because never existed anyone that I could remember from school or high school that has gotten my attention. But, in Tec I started to think in a creative way to do my home works, especially when I studied Industrial Design, those projects were different and I had to fail very times to get one homework right and I cannot deny that I do learn from all those assignments, now I think it is not only how creative you can be, it is about go beyond what the information teach you and use it for something else.
I think when a person failed in something has two choices: one is give up and the second one is accept it was wrong and learn how to do it right from the next time.
For that reason if a person choose the second one will learn more that first time, but we have to remember that students will learn from the failure only if they want because they can keep making the same mistake over and over because they refused to have a learning experience.
When people fail, when it comes to a test of some sort or anything else, they learn a lot. They become able to learn from the mistakes they made, to evaluate an analyze what they did wrong, and correct it. That's the whole point in the cognitive develpment, and that's how people mature and become smarter and knowledgable.
ResponderBorrarI don't think they should be encouraged to fail, nor I think they should be repressed or scolded when they do. A teacher should tell them it's completely okay to fail, he/she'd rather enourage them to learn from their mistakes. The role of a teacher is not to grow perfect robots that won't make any mistake, because even that is against human nature. A teacher must make sure their students know that failing is just part of the learning process.
I dont remember my homeworks pretty well but I can assure you that each and every one of them have helped me become the kind of person that I am today, because the meaning of each task that i have had in my whole life has taught me a lot of things, doesn't matter if i have failed or not.
Actually i think that we learn better when we fail at something, we realize what we have done and why that made us fail and we think about it, which allow us to realize what we have done bad and the next time when a similar task appears, we will remind that time when we failed.
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ResponderBorrarAllowing someone to fail is in some way creating an confident enviroment, a confort
ResponderBorrarzone where you know it doesn´t affect you. It´s curious because when you know you
are allowed to fail, you won´t have these stress or feeling of nervousness. If we
guide our idea in the sense of the proof and error , you will be in agreement with
me that it is more natural to a person to remind an old mistake done in the past
and how he or she answered it , and then how he or she did to correct that mistake
for a future problem.I think the idea of Diana Laufenberg was great, for example; a
personal one, when I was in an exam and there was a tricky question then I recalled
how I failed in a previous practice so I have a sucess. So it is a good idea to take
advantage of human conditions and allow human feeling of fear flow and take advantage
of it too. Only it is bad such as the other systems when a student is not interested in
the process of learning but studens may take assignments seriously and follow
rules for the program to be well done. However and finally it is a creative idea and
moreover useful.
If we think in a specific assignment I am not going to find it but in summary
all the assigments of computer programming in some levels are designed to practice
doing programs, but with the idea that you have to know how complicated is the way
your design was when you are just starting doing your very first program, then discover
and try other ways to improve coding and making programming more flexible, multifunctional,
reusable, and independent talking about its different parts.
Learning from mistakes is not always as easy as people think. Some mistakes are
complex to solve and need many practice and discipline but in general terms and in some
cases yes. We simply know how to face it, what to do and inconvinient possible solutions,
that we shouldn´t repeat because we have the experiece. There are some situations that
have helped me to improve the way I face a problem when it come up.
I think the way of saying to the students that they not always had the reason, or even saying yes to everything, it could be better because you need to fail to make the hole process of learning. I thoroughly dude that if you never fail even once in a time you would be able to instruct someone how have fail even once. I think is better because the experience of learning is a huge instructional progress, and in that instructional progress would be always students that does not know if they brain would be better in that because they always have the reason, that why is so important to try to be instructor and try to let the student know that he or she is failing by him or herself. It could be a possibility that in the progress the student does like the learning that he is developing progress and does not need anymore a instructor because they know how to learn that they were in failure. that is important because in the past of the time you will know what is your favorite assignment and that will be your way of developing. In my case I have been developed in maths and physics, that why i am studying engineer right now and I think the hole progress for me starts in the school when yours teachers try to taught you the different assignments to let you knew how would be your better future.
ResponderBorrarAnd I think that the hardest part is in university when you are a little bit more free and you have to decide your own future, like for example if you want to go to a party or if you want to stay in your apartment studying, which is the better way to do it. That kind of questions will be in your entire life and is a process of failing and learning about that, someone says that you will no learn in others heads; it is very important you know yourself to know how you can learn and what is your perspective about it, if is wrong or good. When you know how to control and you have a lot of experience in thinking how good are the deals in your life you can become a instructor of people who are deciding already and have no experience in that.
Allow students fail, it is not a bad idea at all, because when we fail we also can learn, in fact we could learn more failing than doing all the things good all the time, for example if we need to resolve a problem and we do not have very clear how to do it, we are going to research how to resolve de problem, looking for information in newspapers, magazines, internet, interviews, doing experiments, etc. So we can live the learning process and could be better if we have all the information on the same book.
ResponderBorrarThen leave students failure could help to the learning process, if the students give and effort, finding the way to get to the right answer, because if we get right answers all the time, may be we are genius, so don’t need to study to much, but in the real all the people get wrong answers, and I think that this motivate to the people learn more, because they can remember that they don’t know everything.
My favorite type of homework, its first at all, when I am interested on the topic, when the topic wake up passion on me, and the most important its when I need to create something, and I need look for the tools that I am going to need, because I can put in practice my acknowledge, and the need to research the way to resolve some problems, when do that I feel that I really learn, not for example when study for a written test, and when I complete the exam I forgot everything.
When I fail I don’t feel happy and don’t motivated me to continue, but fail, its important, because when we fail something we need to study or practice more, for get to the right answer, we need to understand more the topic that I am studying, for these reason a feel that I learn when I fail, because I learn that I don’t know enough, and I need to spend more effort studying.
I think that fail is a very good method in the learning process, because when you fail, you learn how you should not to do something. It is a methodology similar to the used by Socrates. You should know your weaknesses to improve them. When you know that you are wrong, you are able to search and investigate for the right answer.
ResponderBorrarFor this reason , I think that the teachers should bring spaces to students to encouraging them to fail. This is one of the best ways to learn, because you really learn, you are not only consuming information, like in the common methods of teaching that are used in the schools.
I agree with the idea of Diana Laufenberg, the students should fail, and it should be the way used by the teachers to teach in the schools.
I have failed in many times, and I'm proud of that, because for every time that I fail, I have a new experience.
During my time in the university, I remember a project that consisted in develop a compiler that should receive human hand-signals to control a device. It was awesome because in the process, I commited a lot of mistakes that I fixed step by step, I thought a lot, I learned and developed my way to find solutions.
There are two areas where I believe that I learn a lot failing, one is to practice an musical instrument, and the other one the computation.
I learned to play the guitar and the guitar bass, failing, and I think that in the most of the cases, this is the way to learn how to play any instrument.
When you try to do a chord for example, or a melody in a guitar, you fail a lot, and you need to know what is what you are doing bad. Then when you keep practicing, you will notice that time by time, you are improving, and you are doing less mistakes.
It is similar in computation, when you try to do some software, device, or fix something, and you fail, you learn a lot, you can search the reason of the failure to avoid the fail again.
In the life not all the things are perfect and sometimes we have to do something over and over again, but this is part of us. When we failed we feel sad but the experience we get is really important because we will learn the mistakes and maybe the next time that we want to do it again we can avoid those mistakes and we will search another solution to the problem with the purpose of resolve it.
ResponderBorrarRelated with the video, I am totally agree with her because the failure is part of the student's learning. I think that if the teacher or someone always gives you the solution of a project or homework, you are not trying to work it out by yourself and you won't learn anything, but if you try and search many possible solutions to the problem and if you finally get the solution you are going to feel really satisfied and happy.
The failure also makes the student gives all the effort and practice more in order to obtain what he wants or pass the course, for example if it is an exam or project. No always we have to do things that we really want to do but we need to do them if we want to obtain something.
I think that all the people have fear about failing, some of them more than others and it is natural to feel that, but in the case of students if we really want to improve our knowledge and abilities in our career or studies we are going to achieve that only if we try to do it all the necessary times.
In my case, I have had some difficult projects to do during my career, particularly related with proggaming. I have had to spend many days, hours doing that kind of projects and sometimes we (my team and me) had problems with the code, but when we try to resolve those problems by ourselves is really nice when we finally could resolve it. I remember that I had to make a web application and we had to connect the page with Facebook, and we had all the code ready but there was an error that we could not t correct at the moment, finally we got the solution one day after the date task.
I think that if we are trying something new, if we want to innovate something, fail is a really important part of the process, if we are failing in something it is because we are not following the normal solution we are trying to find another way to accomplish our objective, for example in school if students live with fear to fail they will become as machines that only follow a way to get a solution but if this students doesn't have fear to fail they will become not only students but critical people that can have a diferent perspective of any problem and will try any solution to accomplish the objective. If we are trying to innovate something the only way to do it is failing and falling a lot, fail meanwhile we are trying something new will give us a lot of ways in which can not accomplish our goal, all this failure will guide us to the right way to innovate and in the process we are going to earn a lot of knowledge.
ResponderBorrarMy favorite homework was to development an aplication in a embedded platform, this aplication have to run in a bleagleboard, when the teacher was giving the instructions we immediately knew that a lot of problem will appear in the proccess, like the 90% of the group decide to do it with a well know tool to avoid this problems but my team (2 other partners and me) decided to try something new, we started the project with a tool that only the teacher know how to used and obviously he won't tell us a lot, in the process we fail and fail at the point that we almost decide to use the other tool but in that same point we have fail so much that no more problems would appear and we decided to keep going with that tool. Meanwhile we was development this application we fail over and over again and when we defeat one fail two more appear but we felt that we any fail defeated by trying and trying to solve the ptoblem we was earning a lot of learng , at the end we finish the project feeling proud about all the effort that we made and all ther learnig that we earn.