Week 9: Learning Styles - Technology Connection

It's Week 9! We're at the final stage of our course  and I feel like I'm going to miss doing assignments till midnight when this class is over. I have successfully submitted my project report on Wednesday *yeay!*. At the same time, I have just completed marking my students examination paper *double yeay!* All done within 5 days. Now that's super teacher. :)

Our discussion topic this week was Learning Styles - Technology Connection. We talked a lot about Howard Gardner's theory of Multiple Intelligence. He identified nine intelligence which are verbal-linguistic, logical/mathematical, visual/spatial, bodily/kinaesthetic, musical/rhythmic, intrapersonal, interpersonal, naturalist and existentialist. You can read general information about this theory on Wikipedia.

In our discussion, among other arguments that we had was whether we should classify students according to their learning styles. Personally, I firmly believe that we should not classify and separate them, especially when we are dealing with younger kids. From my observation, these kids are clingy to their best buddies and if we separate them according to their learning styles which may be different, the probability is they would shut down totally and not do their work at all. Furthermore, I believe that all children has all intelligence. It depends on the surrounding to nurture the whole spectrum. The solution? We as teachers will have to do something to cater to all students' learning styles as well as to foster their learning and strengthen their intelligence.

One of the ways that teachers could do, as suggested in the website Concept to Classroom's Workshop: Tapping into Multiple Intelligences is that we could do what they termed as Learning Centres or Learning Stations. To quote from their page, these Learning Centres are "...situations around the classroom that a teacher sets up for students to work in either small group or individual activities. Each of these centers has supplies and materials that work well together and give students the tools to complete activities and mini-projects -- either in groups of two to three students or individually." In short, by having Learning Centres, we can organise various kinds of activities to cater to different students with different kinds of intelligences. Some of the suggestions that could be implemented in light of technology are: 

LEARNING CENTERS	TECHNOLOGY ACTIVITIES
ILLUSTRATION/VISUAL EXPRESSION CENTER(for encouraging students' Visual/Spatial; Intrapersonal Intelligences)	1) Painting using computer softwares (Paint, Adobe Photoshop, AutoCAD) 2) Cameras (digital, webcam, camcorder) 3) Computer with color printer and scanner: e-mail and Internet connection
SCIENCE/EXPERIMENT CENTER(for encouraging students' Logical/Mathematical, Naturalist, Visual/Spatial Intelligences)	1) A whole lot of Science resources online 2) Computer with color printer: probe-ware, robotics, spreadsheets, and timeliners. Science-based software such as The Voyage of the Mimi (Sunburst), The Great Space Rescue (Tom Snyder Software) and reference CD-ROMs
MUSIC CENTER(for encouraging students' Musical, Bodily-Kinesthetic, Interpersonal Intelligences)	1) CD player, mp3s with headphones 2) Various websites of videos (Youtube, DailyMotion) 3) Computer with microphone, speakers, and earphones plus MIDI connector and keyboard: music composition software, CD-ROMs designed for music study, CDs for incorporating sound into multimedia presentations 4) Various softwares for music composition (MuseScore, Noteflight)
PERFORMANCE CENTER(for encouraging students' Visual/Spatial, Bodily-Kinesthetic, Interpersonal)	1) Cassette or CD-player for background music 2) Computer with color printer: designing costumes, props 3) Animation creator softwares (Anima8or, Pencil)

I have also found this interesting picture while I was surfing on the Internet, looking for an appropriate picture on Google Image. I think the picture reflects better on what our children could do (or maybe are already doing) with the presence of technology in education nowadays.

Anyhow, I also believe that we all should know our own intelligence profile. We could use it to understand ourselves better and perhaps, understand our students too. You can check yours too at http://www.edutopia.org/multiple-intelligences-learning-styles-quiz