March 31, 2005 - The Car as Teacher
I recently bought a Hybrid Prius. Really cool car with lots of interesting technology features. I could almost picture myself in the movie "I, Robot." Look out Will Smith. Here I come. I spent quite a bit of time learning about the features of the car. How to connect the Bluetooth phone--still haven't been able to download my contact list to the car's computer, learning the voice commands, learning to map a route on the navigation system, and trying to reset the Icon names to English--what a laugh, I accidently set them to Japanse. I've had the car for three weeks. I was thinking about the car on the way home the other day and thinking about all the things that I (key word I) had to learn about to be able to use all the features. Suddenly it occurred to me, the car is actually teaching me. Everyday, it is teaching me how to drive to conserve fuel. And, it's working. I've learned how to accelerate so that I don't comsume a lot of fuel and how to brake for the same purpose. This is accomplished through the simply ability of my being able to see the current fuel comsumption and the power sources via the video display. No book, no sequence of learning activities, no classes. None were needed, as the feedback from the car was all I needed!
This lead me to think about other ways that I learn without really knowing it. On DVDs, most directors include a segment, "The Making Of." This is really just directors teaching us how to create special effects in our own movies--without formalized instruction or classes.
Learning in everyday life!