When I heard the word Gedi /ˈdʒɛd.aɪ/ for the first time, I though directly in Jedi from the Star Wars movie. Then it turned out to be a completely different term which is an abbreviation for “Graduate Education Development Institute”. Well, does Jedi have anything to do here?, the answer is yes. The Jedi is an individual who uses a special force to fight for peace and justice. The first thing that this individual needs to do is to study the energy of this force. This leads us directly to learning. Specifically, to a type of learning that did not take place in a school.
Learning beyond the school should be seen as normal and essential for every one. A man should keep looking for knowledge all his lifetime and learn from all the situations he faces in his life. Henry Ford said, “Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young.”
Being well-known, what else could be said about this type of learning? Well, this type of learning now affects students in school-age. As information becomes available everywhere today, students tend to learn not only from school but also from every source they could get their hands on. Students in school begin to learn about specific topics according to the curriculum. Topics in the curriculum are selected by some experts to suit students’ age and to include indispensable topics for the kids. However, kids should be encouraged to look at other sources of information especially in the topics they like.
In this context, I want to share my experience with my second grader son who began to get involved with this type of learning in his seventh year. My son studied about planets and space among other topics in science. He became very interested in these topics and began asking a lot of questions. The same happened in some topics in social studies. His teacher at the school told us to get him more books in the topics he likes. This helped him to get deeper in these topics. I also allowed him to use voice-enabled search engines on my tablet, or phone, to get answers for what he wonders about. To get the point from this, I see that kids should not be limited to what there in school books. We should encourage them to learn more and more about what they like or get interested in. Socrates said, “Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel.”
The next question is, do students need these curricula or they could only learn about what they like? My point of view is that, students still need to learn about essential topics. For example, it is not good to have a scientist who know nothing about the history of his country or about another branch of science. So students need to integrate what they learn in school with their personal interest stimulated by topics studied at school, this type of learning is known as connected learning.
Back to my title, the next half of the title reads “& other drugs”. Actually, this is a reflection to the movie “Love & other drugs”. In this movie, one company was producing a drug for blood pressure. The drug was not so effective in treating blood pressure but it had other side effects that allowed it to help many men in having successful relations. The company of course developed the drug to serve this, but my point here is they learned from a side, meant to be a bad, effect. This also relates to connected learning, learning from experiences or career relevant sources is a an important aspect of connected learning.
In a nutshell, connected learning is inevitable due to the huge sources of information available these days. It should only be oriented from mentors to the way that helps students.