Learn how to learn

I have been reading a blog called 'The Clever Sheep', and Rodd Lucier has a recent post about learning called 'Learning to Change: Changing to Learn'.  Wow - this is a powerful message  that resonates for me when I am thinking about my role as a Leader or Educator for the future. 

The brief video has a collection of international speakers who give us their view of the challenges for students and teachers.  One theme is that students today are so engaged in a rich social network of email, text messaging and instant messaging, yet these activities are all banned at school.  Students find a richer, more  stimulating environment outside the classroom, rather than at school.  Students learn in so many different ways now and we need to teach them  about creativity, working in the context of the situation, working in teams and environments that are multi-cultural, multi-disciplinary and multi-lingual.

I believe that this applies for students, learners  and educators of all ages. Whether they are young people at school, university students, or people learning in the workplace we need to have less of a focus on memorising facts, and more focus on learning how to learn - how to find out information, how to validate it, communicate it, find solutions to problems.  If we do this - we can engage learners in learning how to learn.  What do you think?  How do you approach learning and teaching in your context?