Learning and Action

I thought it was very interesting when Gee says, "For efficacious learning, humans need overt information, but they have a hard time handling it. They also need immersion in actual contexts of practice, but they can find such contexts confusing without overt information and guidance." At first my reaction to this was Huh? but after I reread it, it started to make sense (sometimes I feel like Gee has a weird way of wording things that just confuse me, instead of just saying what he means in plain English). Basically what this means is that if learning is to be effective, we need information that is open to everyone and makes sense, but sometimes this is a problem for people. Then it goes on to say that we need to be immersed in, or thrown into, actual situations of learning, but sometimes this is a problem without the information and help. I can relate this to many times in school. I had teachers who would teach teach teach, but nothing they said really clicked until we got some hands on experience. Then there were the teachers who would just throw us into the learning activity without really telling us what to do, and that wasn't very effective either. I think a good teacher really has to find the balance between the two and it will create much more success in students' learning.