Quote: "Play, questioning, and-perhaps most important-imagination lie at the very heart of arc-of-life learning" (A New Culture of Learning, Loc 71 ) . I chose this quote because for me it summed up the point of these first three chapters. In order to learn, your affective filter needs to be low and what better way to lower your affective filter than through play-based learning? Engaging in play-based learning, along with being encouraged, and taught how to, ask effective questions that spark the imagination is the type of environment in which I strive to immerse my students. This type of environment produces less anxiety, if any at all, while students are working hard in such a fun environment which fosters their imagination and generates creativity in an organic manner where they are not consumers of knowledge, but rather producers of ideas as they share their thoughts and connections with each other.
Question: Do we have this new culture of learning, in which we help create the learning environment ONLY because we have all this technology that facilitates this new acceptable culture in which it is okay to not know things and to ask questions about the topics we wish to learn more about?
Connection: Through places like Twitter and our Google+ communities we are encouraged to ask as many questions as we need to in order to satisfy our thirst for that which we are passionate about. It is not stigmatizing to not know something and we are not trying to prove how much we know about a certain topic, but rather, we are constantly trying to think of the type of questions that will guide us toward future success within an encouraging and supportive environment with the guidance of others who are also just as passionate about the topic at hand as we are.
Epiphany: The new theory of learning: Connectivism, helps define our new culture of learning. Cultivating our PLN has allowed me to learn how to learn from others (A New Culture of Learning, Location 135). We are no longer limited to learning only from institutions of learning. If we learn to develop the art of learning from others, we will find a new type of freedom that involves realizing that we are surrounded by limitless possibilities where potential is all around us.