Learning Blog Prompt - Learning Style Inventory

Out of my learning style inventory, verbal is the most challenging for me. I think this would be the area where I would most want to focus my learning. I have tried for many years to become a better reader but I read words not full concepts and sentences. It’s very difficult when you are trying to read a college textbook for material and don’t get anything out of it let alone remember two words before what you just read. I know that this is the area where I struggle the most and my learning inventory was no surprise to me (I was a completely visual person scoring an 11 on the visual side.) I also would want to learn about hearing disorders and how to overcome them. It has been brought to my attention that I have a hard time hearing things. As well when I do hear sentences (most prominent in a lecture or when the information is important) I head the whole sentence but I can’t remember the whole sentence. I have a hard time being able to head and process the entire sentence at once. If I were to learn more about my learning styles I would want to learn how to overcome these difficulties.

What's in the News?

Article: The Summer Travel Blog: A 2.0 Travelogue to Bridge Summer “Down Time”
By Johanna Riddle
Available at: http://www.electronic-school.com/0997f3.html

Summary: This article discussed a media specialist’s experience winning a Fulbright-Hays Scholarship and getting the chance to travel to China during the summer break. Johanna Riddle described her experience creating a blog that was visited by about 50% of the student body while she was traveling and how she connected the blog to further learning in the classroom. After she returned from China, she used a blog to create a consortium that allowed students to post their work online as well as ask and answer questions and make comments. The third grade students had different assignments in reading, writing, map skills, and technology which were tied to part of the teacher’s trip as well as a culminating project using Adobe Photoshop. As of January, the blog site is still being utilized and continues to benefit the students’ learning.

Response: I thought the article had a lot of interesting facts and points. I think that Johanna was using her technology and multimedia knowledge in the best of ways to portray her experience not just to a small amount of students but to an entire community. I would be interested to see the blog site that the students came up with during the summer as well as what they created in the classroom activities which were associated with the curriculum. Johanna specifically mentioned that the students used Adobe Photoshop to create a layered photo project that resulted in the students’ demonstration of mastery in the areas they were studying (research, writing and technology). The students used the teacher’s photos, their own photos, pictures they found during their research as well as timelines and excerpts of their writing to capture the full capabilities of the students.

My View: I was very intrigued by the author’s experience. I had heard of scholarships and programs which allowed teachers to go to different countries for cultural experiences for a number of reasons. I knew that these recipients usually had to relate it to their general teaching practices in some way. Johanna wasn’t the only one using a blog to keep everyone else updated. It was interesting to see what different multimedia outlets there are for entering pictures, videos, sound clips and other items on a blog website. I think that the aspect I was most interested in was the Adobe Photoshop project. I have problems downloading pictures onto my computer that are small enough to post on a website or upload as a picture as well as putting into a document without overloading the size of the file. Using technology and multimedia applications in that way with third graders really makes me want to learn to use the programs and have such detailed and interesting activities associated with a blog.

Questions: What happens when the next group of third graders comes along? They aren’t able to follow the teacher throughout their travels. Are they able to follow with similar activities in subsequent years? Was any data collected on student feedback? (To determine if any tweeking needed work, if they enjoyed it, anything that might help to reuse the situation for subsequent years.) What are some other ways to travel and use blogs in classroom settings without having to travel to China?

Media Learners

€ How can technology make a difference in learning? Find an example of this difference from the Internet and add the weblink to your post.

Technology can make a difference in learning. It can do so by giving access to different techniques which were not able to be done with a paper and pencil. If you are talking about a design of an object that is abtract or hard to describe, technology makes it easier to give another view of the problem. Technology is able to bridge the pathways between starting a project and ending one with the example of the programs from Inspiration. The actual Inspiration software is geared towards aiding a student in the planning, organizing and research of a project. Technology allows us to see things in a different way. It also allows us to simplify things and make them easier to understand or easier to describe something complex. http://www.nsba.org/sbot/toolkit/tiol.html

€ What are some important ideas to keep in mind as we design learning environments that utilize multimedia in one of the five ways stated in the PDF? (or in any others that you may think of)

There are many important ideas that should be kept in mind when designing a learning environment that utilizes multimedia. First, the multimedia equipment can not be the lesson. If you are using this technology for the first time, you should prepare yourself and try it before in the actual classroom setting with students sitting there waiting for you. If this is the students' first time with the technology then a lesson can be learning the key parts of the technology. Then be used in conjunction with the curriculum and learning environment. Another important thing to remember is to always integrate technology where the inclusion is positive. You don't want to play a video that might confuse the students more. Find the best fit video or application to do just what you want it to do. Make sure there is a good balance between the technology and learning environment. Don't keep all the technology in one area, spread it around so that its within the classroom and not 'in the corner over there.'

Brain Based Learning

Brain based learning is derived from medical studies which help us understand how the brain 'learns'. Knowing about brain based learning is important to any person in a situation where they must teach something. It helps us understand the best ways and approaches to getting new material across with the best retention and memory.Researchers have found that if you associate new material with previous mental, emotional and physical experiences it strengthens memory. For a teacher, if there was any previous information the student might have or experience they can associate the new material with (applying it to the student in their terms) the previous information, it will hopefully promote long-term memory beyond the test or quiz that information was needed for. Taking a different view of this subject: If the student percieves the information as being relevent it diminishes the potential for the material to be remembered. Meaning that if you can't catch the child's attention, the greater chances there are that they won't remember what was said.The challenge now is to find how to natural learning with the practices we see in the classrooms today to better address the learning process.

Music and Learning

I chose this topic because I was interested in a personal experience. When I play music int he background while deeply concentrating on some type of work, I have no problem weeding out the music and being able to focus. I wanted to know what affect music had on my learning process. What I found was quite interesting.When comparing electroencephalograms (EEGs) of children who were listening to music and who weren't there is an increase of brain activity in the temporal region. This region is responsible for sound and music. Research has shown that the brainwave activity increases when listening to music at a certain level. Research has also shown that it imporves cognitive functioning, assists in achieving higher mental performances and helps increase the size of the brains neurons. The brains neurons being larger is important because the larger and stronger they are, the stronger the pathways are which carry signals within the body. When thinking about the classroom, I remember having a teacher or two play classical or slow jazz in the background during a quiet reading time or work period. I didn't mind it; I felt focused, more confident and efficient with my work. However there is science reasoning on why this is so. Listening to classical music has shown improvements in math scores. Listening to soft rock or jazz has shown higher productivity and performance efficiency in students. For a teacher I would think this would be important to think of if you are giving individual work to students. This isn't 100% effective however; every student has their own musical preferences and not a single person's brain works the same way as another.

Problem/Project-Based Learning

I recently was working with my internet network in my apartment so that all the computers and wireless devices on it were working. My roommate has a Mac laptop, I have an iPhone, a palm pilot as well as a desktop and laptop computers both running XP. I had never worked with Mac computers except a few times in different computer labs but nothing extensive. My boyfriend is the IT and Security Specialist for the radio station B101 and had setup the wireless network for me. However my roommate's laptop was being difficult: the laptop would get internet initially when you put in the 52 digit password but then once you restarted it, it wouldn't be able to connect. I had emailed my boyfriend to make a trip to my apartment to sit down and 'fix' the situation. I knew that he wouldn't be able to get down there for a few days and really wanted to get the internet up for my roommate. I knew I was somewhat confident in my computer experiences to KNOW I could figure out what to do. Instead of waiting for my boyfriend to come do the work for me I took my roommates laptop and sat down between all three computers and started changing each and every setting possible till I found one that decided to work. This took a lot of self confidence and motivation to keep working at doing it on my own without consulting someone else. I sat down and looked at each of the different securities available with my router and attempted each one using the best of my problem solving skills. Even though it took time, my desire to complete the task on my own paid off. I was able to find a very secure setup for the network which allows all computers access. Thus far, it has worked flawlessly. When I ended up talking with my boyfriend later, he said that he would have done the same setup! So my confidence skyrocketed knowing that the professional with degrees in the field would have chosen the same path as myself. I think that it is important for students to understand how to troubleshoot and work around the errors and alerts that come up on computers when working with technology. This could be turned into a classroom activity where students have a few different options which they must figure out the correct setup to get the best results. It's a trial by error by doing type of activity. There is some science or knowledge behind it but you still have to be able to exercise the power of doing to create results.

Reflection to Marc Prensky, Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants

When I was reading Marc Prensky's "Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants" I was bored at first. All of what I was reading was nothing too surprising to me. A benefit I did get out of reading this was that Marc Prensky gave me good terminology for describing the differences with those who grew up with technology versus those who had to learn it or still refuse to learn it. He took the words right out of my mouth when describing the differences between my parents and my siblings. My younger sister is on the beginning of learning the internet world and because my parents weren't Digital Natives they weren't aware of the impending doom on not having an anti-virus on the computer. And two computers later, my sister has learned more about trustable sites and my parents had to find some way of fixing the computers. Instead of learning about what to do or how to protect them, they hired someone or picked my brain to 'make it better'. My mother didn't have an email account until November, when I set it up for her. My dad didn't know how to turn on his new laptop.

Being an engineer as my primary background, I had an easy time learning the basics of CAD freshman year. I wasn't required to do much more with that software, but did with others which were more complex. I didn't know that Doom, Quake and Monkey Wrench were made for the assistance in learning to use CAD software. If I had known this I would have definitely picked up the games to learn more. CAD was a software that I frequently encountered possibly being able to use, but because I didn't know enough about it, would pass on the opportunity.

I think it would be beneficial for myself, for other future teachers, for current teachers in all levels to know how to teach to the Digital Natives. If what's going on currently isn't working effectively enough, what practices can be done to make the needed change?