After viewing the Ted talk http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/gever_tulley_s_tinkering_school_in_action.html ), I found myself thinking that the style of learning that the tinker school uses is very close to mine. They use a hands-on approach to teaching. I like hands-on learning much better than a more formal style of learning. For me it is easier to dive into something and start working on it than to try to read about it and remember everything or have a teacher lecture for an hour. I can learn in a classroom environment just not from a lecturing teacher or a textbook. I need examples of problems given and solved to get a good understanding of how something works.
This summer I had to do a lot of hands on learning. I landed a job at Breyer’s Sales and Service in La Crescent. Breyer’s is a shop that sells and repairs all sorts of lawn-mowers, chainsaws, trimmers, and many other products. I didn’t really know anything about engines or lawnmowers before I started working there. The other mechanics at the shop would slowly teach me different things about repairing lawnmowers and other machines and I caught on pretty quick. On the other hand if I am given a book on how to fix a lawnmower it takes me much longer to finish the project.
My job at Breyer’s made me realize that I am more of a hands-on learner than I thought I was. In Tulley’s video he said that they celebrate mistakes. Most of the time people think of mistake as bad things, and they are kind of right, but mistakes can also be good. I believe that when you make a mistake you can learn a lot. From knowing what not to do comes a better understanding of what to do.
