Mary Beth
Manley
When I was in elementary school, I learned keyboard typing from the school’s computer teacher. My classmates and I were in a computer lab full of desktop computers and used computer software that continuously taught and assessed our typing accuracy and speed. Truthfully, the teacher herself did little except to go around the room and make sure we were not looking at the keys or otherwise cheating at completing the program correctly. Typing, particularly using conventional home row key positions as we were taught, would be considered a skill. We learned this to prepare us for academic writing later on in school.
Elementary School
In the process of learning at the science center.
Celebrating the accomplishment of graduating from high school.
Learning doesn't stop after school is over - professional development in progress.
In the process of learning at the science center.
Personal Learning Experiences
In high school I learned how to format and write a full-length research paper. My English teacher taught me how, and it was taught as a long-term project split up into discrete steps. Each step had its own deadline and was almost treated as a separate assignment altogether, but all of them could be considered skills. The skills that go into writing a research paper were taught to my classmates and I so that we could thoroughly share our knowledge on a given topic in the future. Since the class was aimed at students on a college preparatory track, this skill was likely intended to help us with future assignments at the college level.
High School
As an intervention specialist (special education teacher), I attended teacher training on how to properly write an Individualized Education Program (IEP) for students with special needs using our system’s software and standards. The training was conducted by our special education manager, and we learned the material through a combination of walking through the program and trying out its features for ourselves. It partially involved imparting information, in that our organization had specific content guidelines that it wanted followed when such documents were written. However, it also partially involved learning a skill, as the information written in IEPs varies from document to document but ultimately needs to be written in a certain style. My colleagues and I learned the IEP-writing process because writing those documents was a major part of our job.