In a similar fashion to chapter one’s introduction, we can utilize two supporting stories to illustrate the important potential and/or actual role of SC in learning. One of the stories in question is a personal anecdote, and the other is a formal/academic “story” of sorts, a research paper by Warren et.-al (2001) about the role—or “logic” to use the authors’ own term—of “everyday sensemaking” in science learning.
Mr. Turtle
First, I will share the personal anecdote. From around the beginning of the fall of 2020, I vigorously re-embarked on my quest to autodidactically learn software-development. As part of that initiative, I am consistently a utilizing a number of free or very affordable* online or practice-based resources and activities, including (but not limited to):
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*“Coding Dojo’s (a software-development learning-“bootcamp”) “Basic-13” algorithms & Loiane Groner’s “Learning JavaScript Data Structures and Algorithms” book
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Freecodecamp.org and their YouTube channel
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Javascript.info
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Ed-X/Harvard’s CS50 Introduction to web development with David Malan
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*The Udemy The Python Mega Course 2021/2022 by Ardit Sulce, and
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Planning and building actual projects, i.e.:
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“Higher-Ed-X” —a website/app for helping prospective US-college-bound international students;
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“Pop-Scholar”—a soc.-media and mini-blogging site for lovers of general knowledge; and;
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A site for public-users to perform data-analysis and visualizations using Python and Flask.
For all the above three projects, I utilize the three main development computing software-tools (so to speak) for websites: i.e., HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. I also use the “MERN stack,” a set of development tools based on the JavaScript programming language.
I also joined an online software-learning platform called “The Odin Project.” This platform enables autodidactic-learners of software-development to utilize free quality resources curated from various online sources—including the ones in my list above, and it facilitates collaboration among aspiring software-developers/engineers.
Consequently, I linked up with a number of diverse learners from across the globe—USA, Asia, Europe, Africa, and we formed a study-group via the Discord collaboration platform. And over the course of the past one and a half years, I realized that as a result of my learning style/abilities and personal-economic/financial situation, I have to utilize a “slow-cook” learning method.
Eventually, I gave myself a nickname—“Mr. Turtle,” based on the fairy-tale of “The Tortoise and the Hare.” The rationale behind that nickname, which I often repeat to my “Odinson”* study-group buddies to date (*the name we gave our study-group), is thus: they—i.e., my buddies—might rapidly overtake me with their impressive learning speeds, akin to cheetahs or Usain Bolt. But I on the other hand, will eventually win the race through a slow-but-steady run.
And I am glad to report that the approach has yielded substantively-quantifiable results to date. The doofus who could barely start a collaboration session via the VS-Code editor or write a standard “for-loop,” can now correctly type out a number of JavaScript algorithms—e.g., printing the maximum, minimum, and average values from a given array, or using functions to somehow process array elements, and can comfortably start building and maintaining a basic web application using. In fact, some of my “Odinson” buddies and I are now building the above-listed “Higher-Ed-X,” a real e-commerce app using the aforementioned JavaScript-based MERN stack. The app is the culmination of a business-idea I’ve been nurturing and have field-tested since 2016, with international students who intend to pursue higher education in the USA.