Quick post in english - what is Asentajakilta?

Asentajakilta, roughly translated as Mechanic's Guild, is a freshly started (well, two years now as we're the second 'test group') new type of teaching experiment from the social media and guild kind methods point of view. The groups of students usually have several teachers and jump from a hall to another to learn things, but in our case we have a dedicated hall and group leader (or class teacher). Having a permanent tutor and a supervisor makes the studying more intensive and personal as we have the possibility to get to know each other quite well. I would guess the situation is better even for the teacher as he can evaluate success and learning when he knows the students strengths and weaknesses.

Teaching in the Asentajakilta is very down to earth like and the name guild well describes the methods and routines we have daily. We learn a lot from each others success stories and mistakes. And in fact what was quite surprising to me when attending the classes first time was how our teacher confronts student error and mistakes. He is probably the most understanding teacher I've ever met and I must say I have a lot of experience in messing things up (still doing it but learning from it massively). It is part of the 'deal' that students are supposed to often reflect via blogs and social media of their work and jobs done. My blog here is this kind of a blog and I have to say it really has been fun to make and it makes me rethink all the learned things at school.

Pro's of this kind of teaching is certainly that it takes the student's own characteristics into account better than in an environment, where the student doesn't have his/hers own tutor and more permanent studying facilities. It really makes a huge difference at least at this level of studies where the basic student's age is around 16-18. And another positive thing is this method of really pushing the lessons learnt to our heads by making us discuss and see what others have done. This blogging method is very useful when you get in to it. At least I find it most effective and interesting.

Con's are more related to learning environment in general. We can't have our tutor behind our back every minute or as often we would want. :) There are 19 students in our group not to mention the customers and other random students asking questions all day. It is sometimes quite hectic and we see our tutor flying from one point to another in a matter of minutes. If I must say something faulty about this blogging thing it is probably the lack of proper instructions and guidelines on typing and creating content. At this age (the most students here) people need more precise and fact based guidelines and rules. Of course we have rules that concern day to day random going to school kind of things like how to behave in the canteen or when we have breaks, but I think you got the idea that the concept itself should be more precise... (and one is capable of forgetting even those basic rules from time to time so how to master blogging without some sort of frame).

All in all mech's guild has been, at least for me, an awesome experience and really socially boosted learning. It's definitely a privilege to be part of the mech's guild.

Lastly, we definitely use all learning styles... see the pic below. (Yes, even musically when some sing and whistle while working...)



Jekku

Note to all: if you find any typos, ignore them... ;)