Fascinating! Both of you ladies have made excellent points. I would like to piggyback off of what Lynne said for a moment.

Lynne, you said that note-taking is a lost skill. From my experience, note-taking was a monotonous task of copying down words and phrases from an overhead projector. To make matters worse, teachers would often talk while I was trying to copy down the notes. My mind felt split and I couldn't focus on both tasks at the same time (copying pre-written notes and listening to the teacher). When I went to college, I listened to the teacher and I wrote notes from there. I stopped copying down notes from the projector, and my grades went way up. I think we need to teach students how to perfect this skill instead of constantly force feeding them 100 pages of notes that they will never look at. In fact, if the students wrote down the notes themselves based upon what they found to be useful, then I bet they will be more likely to review them later. If students can also be taught and encouraged to draw pictures based on their impressions as well, that could further faciliate learning and thinking. The benefits of explicit instruction is that it is teacher-controlled and ensures a solid explanation of content.

I think you're right in that a little of both is needed. Without some kind of explicit instruction (lecture), how can students know how to explore and learn creatively? They need to foundations to build upon while engaging in cooperative learning and hands-on tasks. The foundations provide the prior knowledge which they need to grasp concepts multidimensionally. Recipe for success!