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.