According to the reading, learning is rooted in activity and social interaction. I definitely agree with the activity part. Social interaction is interesting. Dan mentioned being bored on the plane. On the way home this break, I continued to teach myself Flash, which was actually a lot of fun. There was no human interaction, but I guess you could argue that I was interacting, though asynchronously with the people who write the tutorials (whom I need to have a word with, by the way--actually they did a pretty good job but it sure would be tough for someone with now object-oriented programing to get those things). I like the idea of constructing expert knowledge, transfer, and "conditional" knowledge. Also the idea of learning as teaching yourself how to learn.
Dan GilbertNice notes. Why were you compelled to take advantage of airplane time to learn a specific skill? Pressure to learn, curiosity, opportunity, a need to fight boredom? All of these?