Dear mentors and colleagues:
This week I have read the sites recommended for reading and learned a lot about learning styles and multiple intelligences, and how multimedia could positively affect teaching and learning. In the past I taught my students in a given way as if they were all learning the same way. Reading about Gardner’s theory I realize now that I failed to meet all my students learning styles. Gardner has shown us that people learn differently; he has come up with a theory of eight learning styles. Based on to Gardner’s theory, teachers could devise class activities or tasks to meet every student’s learning style. These activities must engage learners in ‘fostering knowledge transfer to new situations, higher-level thinking, attitude change, and motivation for further learning’ (Rick Finnan and Donna Shaw quoting James L. Cooper and Pamela Robinson) in “Enhancing Learning by Engaging Students”.
Now a new problem arises from the ‘multiplicity of our students’ learning styles: How can teachers cope with such a situation? I think that being aware of the differences that exist between our students is already a good start for solving the problem. For schools which have scarce teaching and learning materials, technology seems to offer various possibilities to meet our students’ different needs and interests. The idea of introducing technology is well perceived in “Multiple Intelligences and Technology” at hht://www.cascanada.com/multech.html: “Multiple Intelligences can be enhanced with the use of technology.” The article goes further to give a specific example of the use of word processing softwares to help teach language aspects - like writing, editing, and rewriting - that could be designed to meet, for example, the linguistic learner style.
Other applications of technology can be used to meet our students’ learning styles, but what matters is how judiciously the teacher chooses the most appropriate and available materials for his specific students. As my students’ language need is writing, the project with my students will be on ‘Writing an Invitation Letter.’’ As far as I am concerned and for the time being, my students and I limit ourselves to the simplest uses of the computer and the Internet like logging in and out, sending and receiving mail and web searching. Anyway, my students and I have already gotten on the technology ‘bandwaggon’ to stop right now.
Yours,
Bruno
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Dear Bruno,
ReplyDeleteWe have to accept that we learn all our lives. No one knows everything. Those who think they do only deceive themselves. The important thing is to be prepared to learn and to make the necessary changes that will help us become better teachers. The fact that we are here shows that we are eager to learn new things in order to improve our teaching.
Whether we like it or not, technology has become an indispensable part of our life, and if we learn how to use it efficiently in our teaching, we will be better prepared for today's and future generations. So, even if we start with the simplest uses of the computer and the Internet, as you say, it's an important step that will lead to greater inclusion of technology as we learn more.
All the best,
Nina
Bruno,
ReplyDeleteI agree with Nina on our continuous learning through our lifetimes. But have you thought that you actually use a set of learning strategies intimately related to your learning styles?
What I want to say is that a way to cope with the immense variety of learning differences among our students, we should also teach them how to discover the best way they learn. In doing so, the use of teaching strategies to cope with learning styles can be easily taken care. It's no easy task, but it is rewarding at the end.
Jonathan
Bruno,
ReplyDeleteI definitely feel the same way about not being able to meet my students learning styles in the past. Many people talked to me about that, but they did not give me tell me how to address these learning styles. It was until I started to infestigate about MI and learning styles and how to include them in the lesson plans, that I finally stated to address the different ways in which my students learned. I have to say that it is not an easy task to create a lesson plan in which all your students learning necessities are taken into account.
Now we know that we have different technology tools can we can bring to the classes and foster the students' learning needs.
Cristian