At first glance of this learning model I really agreed most of the major tenants that compose its make up. But as Ibegan to dig deeper into more and more of the fine points of this module I wondered how much I truly believe it could work in my setting. First, I want to say that I really do believe that for someone to actually do something they need to see it modeled for them and then be able to do it themselves with the "master" watching over them to provide instant feedback, either being critical or appraisal. I find it similar to idea and institution of guilds from back during the Medieval Era of Europe. Now this just might be my history teacher showing but one would start out as an apprentice learning the tricks of the trade, then become a journeyman to begin taking those tricks and apply them, ultimately making a masterpiece to become a master. All of this takes place under the watchful eye of a master(s) to help give feedback as necessary to help move the student along their learning journey. I really like the real world applications that are the backbone of this model as that is what a lot of people ask about education today is what are the real world ramifications of the material in the curricula of different subjects. That could also be the major barrier to this model is that we have advanced ourselves as educators in the last 500 years and understand that there are different learning styles. Not all students can learn through the visual pedagogical style and need different viewpoints taken on the material to completely understand the material.
As the model stands as it is today I do not think that I would go take it and apply it into my classroom today. In any of the classes that I teach as a social studies teacher do not require anywhere for the students to look to me to model any sort of action(s) and then for them to follow suit. The only part that I can see using this model was used in the moving/budget project that one of Dr. Oliver's groups did in the past. In Civics and Economics we cover a personal financial literacy section and expect our students to be able to balance a checkbook and manage a budget. Outside of that I am sure I could take bits and pieces of this model such as creating a mission and cover story for different assignments, so as to give my students a different perspective to take on to complete projects.
To apply this model to the Web would take some work. To continue on the whole apprenticeship-master relationship, I believe that some sort of video-conferencing would be a must for the students to grasp the selected material. This could be in real-time or even videos created and posted to a website for the students to watch to have that model. Then some sort of e-mail alerts or notification system would need to be implemented to allow for the teacher/facilitator of this assignment to provide feedback or to answer clarifying questions.
