The day started of with Elizabeth Stone Memorial Lecture held by professor Kirsti Lonka from the University of Helsinki. Her lecture was very inspiring. She was talking from university perspective but many of these things apply to earlier educational levels as well. She brought up that the learning models has to change as the learning environment has changed so dramatically. Not only the information environment but the physical learning environments has been subjects to change. We also have to adapt the ways of collective learning. That comes up also in the Finland's national curriulum. Blended learning in many different arenas is usual and we are in my own opinion creating physical/virtual learning commons for the whole school community. She also took up epistemic agency by Scardamalia 2002. Need to study on that to understand.
Interest is something that drives the students. It is not an emotion but a state of mind. According to a study by Alexander & Jetton & Kullikowich (1995), prior knowledge of an issue is related to interest experience. Students that show more interest are also more persistent. But is instruction promoting interest (Tsai et al, 2008)? Often the more control, the less positive the emotion. She said that cognitive autonomy support gives students an enhanced sence of control. This is very much related to Kuhlthau's ideas of giving room to students to develop these skills, not spoon feeding. Autonomy, agency and identity building are the subjects that has strongly risen this week and they came up in Kirsti Lonka's presentation as well.
Loertscher and Woolls in their presentation took up the subject of "invisible librarians". They had in their studies found out that librarians are often taken for granted and therefore also forgtten in a way. They see a way to get visible to become an actor in school virtual learning environments with a Knowledge Building Centers.
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