Learning Styles Inventory & Multimedia Learning

According to the Learning Styles Inventory I am a fairly intuitive learner with a moderate bias for visual learning, slightly reflective versus active and with a strong bias towards global versus sequential learning. This fits fairly well with my prior understanding of my self and the way I learn....technically called metacognition, I believe. The most striking example of this combination of learning traits is probably the tendency to be apparently totally confused with a new subject until suddenly it all comes into focus, the pieces fit and it all makes sense. At that point, it usually is a little befuddling as to what the confusion was all along. But this is a repeated theme over many years of new adventures in learning. Early on you question yourself and have self-doubt, but later, with experience you learn to trust yourself and to be persistent, to keep asking the probing questions on the pieces that don't fit because sooner or later you know you will get it and get it well. It is comforting to see expert validations of senses of yourself that developed over the years. I think it is important for teachers to be patient with students who sometimes appear to be "late bloomers" on a new subject because I can assure you that some of them will astound you with their depth of insight and understanding once they do get it. These same people, I believe, tend to be some of the best intuitive thinkers who eventually get a firm grasp on the real structure, the essence of a subject, will master it, and make new discoveries. I recommend you check out Jerome Bruner's Process of Education as a classic in modern educational thinking. It talks a lot about intuitive thinking and the mastery of structure....and being patient with the late bloomer who may seem to be muddling along, but is really just persistently building a structural foundation in understanding that will endure: http://www.math.rochester.edu/people/faculty/rarm/bruner.html , http://www.infed.org/thinkers/bruner.htm

Concerning what type of multimedia learning is most challenging for me, I would say it is any type where there is a random smattering of tools and techniques shown to me without getting the big picture of why we are doing this and how it fits with the overall vision of what we are trying to accomplish.....I guess that is a lot of what the "twitch-speed" thinking of the, so-called, Digital Natives tends to gravitate towards...but it really helps me to have the bigger view. Still, I can say this has always been true and it is not a function of the internet or multimedia based learning. Frankly, WedQuest sounds fascinating and I am looking forward to learning more about that and how it can be effectively used by teachers in the modern classroom. The key for me is integration of things like WebQuest with traditional methods to make a better whole. I think the way The Last Lecture was presented at Carnegie-Melon was a classic example of how to integrate direct teacher engagement with the student audience and to vastly complement that with multimedia tools that don't get in between the teacher and student, but expand upon their interface to help them view together the wide world around us in a joint educational adventure. Another great use of multimedia is in linking different classrooms around the country and around the world in real time or otherwise. What a way to build understanding and "walk in another's shoes"...to share ideas and perspectives. This is education via multimedia at its best.

Reflection of CSpeck on Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants by Mark Prensky (Parts I & II)

In "Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants", Mark Prensky turns the tables on the debate over school reform by shifting the focus from what has changed in the educational system to what has changed in the studentPRENSKY DIGITAL NATIVES. In fact, he points back to what has not changed, and what probably should change in our educational system and our teaching methods to better align with the needs of the new generations of "Digital Natives." By characterizing the arrival and rapid dissemination of digital technology in the last decades of the 20th century as a "singularity," he elevates this event in our awareness as a kind of cataclysmic cultural event that has created a digital divide, so-to-speak, between generations.

While I do not believe that this entirely accounts for the decline in the educational system, Prensky is definitely onto a paradigm shift that must occur among educators if we are to make the system work optimally for today's students. There are many other factors at play including the relative sparsity in the implementation of basic and proven approaches to lesson planning such as Backwards Design and the foundation of lesson planning on essential questions and key understanding that has shown profoundly more successful results in countries such as Japan, Germany, and India (see Understanding by Design, Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe
) with the same kind of Digital Native generation. Our need to get away from rote, passive note-taking, lecture-based teaching and much of the "coverage" based curriculum is actually independent of the "digital age", but we can and should leverage the Digital Natives' aptitude and facility with the technology to better engage the student and optimize the learning experience.

So while I agree whole-heartedly with Prensky's points, there are some missed and we should not assume that a leap into the digital world itself will lead to better education. There are other factors and one point brought out by Prensky that the Boomer generation perhaps can help with is in the area of reflection and critical thinking.

As a Baby Boomer and parent of two "Digital Natives" myself, I think I can echo and emphasize the concern my generation has with the apparent deemphasis on reflection and critical thinking skills in the Digital Natives. There is a tendency to think in different ways when we are bombarded by the products of a "sound bite" or "video bite" environment, and while I greatly appreciate, admire, and rely on my two Digital Native children's fluency in the so-called digital world and their abilities to multi-task and "parallel process," I find that many times I can balance, stabilize, and focus their "twitch-speed" reflexive thinking to better ends by my "old-fashioned" ways. We need to take the best from both worlds and not lose the thread of all that preceded and, in fact, led to the advent of the digital age. As Isaac Newton said, "If I see further, it is because I stand on the shoulders of giants" Never forget that.

I think their is another fundamental concern we should also consider and that is the apparent correlation between the explosion of Attention Deficit type disorders in the Digital Native Generation. That is very real and disturbing and a point that Prensky misses (I think). I found a couple pertinent online references for this that you can check out at http://www.kidshealth.org/parent/emotions/behavior/adhd.html> and at
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1635698

So, maybe if we work together we can help each other and make it all better---that is one "think" that will never change.