My 3 year old says "that's ridiculous" to a symbolic tool belt

As I've blogged about before, I have 2 sons, one is 3 and the other is almost 2. My 2 year old is strating to talk but we mostly don't understand him. My 3 year old is quickly mastering the english language. It's amazing actually. It always strikes me at how much he has learned in his short life time. First I ask myself, why is that so amazing? For some reason we think these words are reservered for older people. Do we think only when you are a certain age, can you attain a certain level of knowledge. As you get older everyone thinks you get smarter but then at a ceratin age, that stops, does it reverse? Stereotypically, elderly people don't usually understand the ins and outs of our complex world, why is this? so is knowledge like a peaked line on a graph with an incline and a decline?

When I think about my 3 year old struggling over big words, I laugh to myself because it sounds so cute to hear such a big word come out of such a little mouth. It reminds me of the book by Frank Smith, Learning and Forgetting. Kids learn these words because they are immersed into an environment where the words are used in "authentic" ways. They listen and try the words out and constantly get feedback from those around them. As we get older, this changes, we are expected to "know" a certain amount of words and we are afraid of trying a word we don't know because of what people will say or think if we use the word incorrectly. We don't get the positive reinforcement like we do when we are "3". Again, when and why does this change? Does this attribute to why adults don't learn at the astronomical rate that kids do when they are so young? Why do we think its ok for kids to do this but not adults?

To take this to the next level, as educators, we should be creating environments to submerge our "learners" in to teach them all sorts of subjects. When we are 3, the majority of people around us know more than us, when we get to school, the ratios change. This makes me think of teaching in more authentic ways, which isn't brain surgery, but it also makes me think of team teaching or having more volunteers or other particpants in education help to make up this environment. How do I do this myself? How can I create environments in my classes of pd and tech training that will be affective. What are the big ideas, to walk away not with all the knowledge but the basics of a program so they have the tools to learn the rest...hmm...brainstorm...these big ideas need to be presented along with the tools...a symbolic toolbelt like Dr K talked about but for my class...I need to keep going with this.

The tools are:
1 - the basic skills of the program, understanding the purpose, (class)
2 - knowing how to get help in applying it (bb community & my contact info)
3 - Understanding how to start and dig in and know that they can't know everything
4 - Know they can't learn everything an d how they learn the program is by constructing knowledge through using it...

This needs work but it's a start