Here is this lesson's blog prompt: How can instructional technology and media help the teacher to meet varying learning styles and preferences in K-12 eLearning? Provide specific examples in your response.
"Learning styles, according to Howard Gardner, are the ways in which an individual approaches a range of tasks. They have been categorized in a number of different ways -- visual, auditory, and kinesthetic, impulsive and reflective, right brain and left brain, etc. Gardner argues that the idea of learning styles does not contain clear criteria for how one would define a learning style, where the style comes, and how it can be recognized and assessed. He phrases the idea of learning styles as "a hypothesis of how an individual approaches a range of materials."
Article on the difference between Multiple Intelligences and Learning Styles.
http://www.edutopia.org/multiple-intelligences-research
Article on the Future of Education and how technology is impacted the way we teach.
http://howardgardner.com/2015/09/08/gardner-on-educations-future/
Video on what defines the different multiple intelligences.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cf6lqfNTmaM&feature=player_embedded
Frames of mind and using learning styles thru the use of computer technology.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1J2fzzYWic&feature=player_embedded#t=150
I have always ben a fan of Howard Gardner. I read his theory on Multiple Intelligences when my school was deemed a failing school the first few years of AIMS testing. Of course all testing is done pencil paper. Black print on white paper with little dots you have to fill in to answer a problem.
At Alchesay High School on the White Mountain Indian reservation we were under the gun to help students who had failed the AIMS mathematics test. 75 seniors were facing not graduating when passing the AIMS test became a requirement for graduation. Plus the only measure of a student success after 4 years of high school was in Mathematics and a Reading/Essay.
No matter that a student could excel in other ways, this was the only way they could graduate. The only way student's learning is valued to this day and time is if they can take and pass a summative written test. The following are not tested: No art, no music, no business, no drama, no electronics, no computers, no biology, no botany, no astronomy, no anatomy, no geography, no chemistry, no child care, no cooking, no poetry, no sports, no politics, no nature, no photography, no woodworking, no automobile expertise, no medicine, no building, nor many other areas that were just as important in real life.
For a society (White Mountain Apache) that just had their language translated into written English barely one generation ago, this was an unbelievable way to examine learning. Everything they did was oral not written. This is the traditional way Apache s learned for generations.
One of the most interesting classes I ever took was given by an elderly Apache woman who was teaching a class in "How to make a camp dress.". It was the strangest class I had ever taken. I have always done well on mathematical/logical/visual/spatial learning. This way of making a dress threw me for a loop. This was not any way close to my learning style, but it was fun. There were no rulers, no written instructions, no measuring nor any modern text. Take a length of cloth. She showed us how to hold out our arm, that was the sleeve length, rip, rip. Hold up the cloth to your waist, rip, rip. Fold the cloth around your neck, rip, rip. Now sew the pieces together. The dress emerged! Amazing. It was the first time I could remember making something this way. This was the traditional way millions of non-literate people learned. Elders showed them how to do something the student did it until correct.
Apache dress designer.
http://www.globemiamitimes.com/the-woman-who-wears-the-dress/
When we started to integrate multiple intelligences and learning styles into our lesson plans we began to have an amazing 30% improvement in one year. The first year we concentrated on helping the seniors graduate. The next year we focused on all the other students. What we learned by helping the seniors helped other students. We went from 5 classes of failing Algebra 1 to only about 7 students out of 750 students just by teaching mathematics in different ways instead of the traditional western pencil paper math. We used the internet, virtual tour to up load other cultures, we had more hands on math, encouraged art, music and tactile math. We cooked and made things, we pretended to be on other planets. We looked at hurricanes and tsunamis. Most kids in a desert could not even imagine that much water, when the average rainfall s 6 " a year. We related it to the power of water in a dry wash swollen with water, but they imagined the flow of the water was as tall as a mountain. We took the students outside so elders could show students how to tell sun time with a stick and a shadow. Elders explained the seasons. We related mathematics to their lives.
I was lucky to be teaching mathematics in a room that had a common office with one of the Apache men (Mr. Perry) who had originally translated the Apache Language into English. He was a very respected elder. He was amazing. Maybe recording native speakers on podcasts could preserve the language. The technology is so easy now that an Apache student with a cell phone, believe me I took enough of them away from students until after class when I was teaching, could easily record their parents and grandparents speaking Apache. It would make a great project for students.
http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1999-06-09/news/9906090303_1_apache-language-english-dictionary
In his interview Howard Gardner mentions his work in Italy. Italy is the home of the Montessori method of teaching. He does not recommend they revise their education system by adopting the test centric and student evaluation centric methods of the United States and Great Britain.
"Montessori students learn through sensory-motor activities, working with materials that develop their cognitive powers through direct experience: seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, touching, and movement, ... then progress from concrete to abstract thinking."
http://amshq.org/Montessori-Education/Introduction-to-Montessori
I think one way that technology and instructional media can help a teacher is to offer students a different viewpoint. There are many different ways to solve a problem. They need to be able to think. If you look up anything on the web you find millions of ways to do something. Students need to become self learners, to go where the wind blows them. Who knows what they can learn? .
No comments:
Post a Comment