Eight Big Ideas for Learning

I recently stumbled across this blog post (from Weblogg-ed) which in turn linked to this blog post (from Generation YES blog) which finally led me to this PDF document, which is the one this entry is really about. (The other links are worth reading too, however.)
The document is titled 8 Big Ideas Behind the Constructionist Learning Lab.  Constructivism is the idea that people generate knowledge from a combination of experience and ideas and where the teacher is seen as a facilitator. These 8 big ideas are certainly relevant to what we are doing at VCA, and although they are 12 years old, they seem to be applicable to education today.  Here's a quick outline:

1. Learning by doing.
2. Technology as building material
3. Hard fun (sort of like a professional athlete works hard to be successful and enjoys it)
4. Learning to learn (the opposite of "the only way to learn is by being taught")
5. Take the proper time for the job
6. You can't get it right without getting it wrong
7. Do unto ourselves what we do unto our students (they learn, we should be learning too)
8. Digital world

The entire document is one page, easily printable, but each of the 8 big ideas is described in more detail. I think I'm going to print it and post it where I can see it.