Learning styles and Multiple intelligences are interrelated. It is easy to assume that what worked for us as learners, will work for others. It's helpful to consider other ways of learning and how to acknowledge that there are many pathways to the goal of language acquisition. I think variety is the key.
Howard Gardner's theory of Multiple Intelligence is only about 25 years old but it has permeated education, psychology and career coaching. For example, the government of Canada has an MI quiz on its website for job seekers. Including these ideas help enrich the learning environments we create as teachers. Technology helps us do that, particularly the wealth of material available over the Internet.
For an opposing view on learning styles, please view this youtube video by Daniel Willingham. He argues that learning styles do not exist. For example, some information is most easily relayed visually whereas other information is most easily relayed in an auditory manner. Any teacher will teach in a variety of ways for this reason and any learner will learn in a variety of ways for this reason. I'm not sure how to react to this argument. I'd have to do more analysis of how the brain works and how I think this would impact my teaching.
For me, the most useful aspect to come out of this week's readings and reflections has been that we as teachers can use technology in many ways to expand our ideas of how to teach and how to learn. The ideas posted on nicenet as well as the ideas discussed in the readings have helped me consider new ways to introduce language to students, help them work with language, and help them create with the new language.
This also relates to my final project for the course. I introduced wikis to help with student writing and understanding of reading material, and we used a camera to record student presentations. I was able to use technology to expand and enliven our current curriculum requirements of writing, reading and speaking. The feedback from the students has been positive. My goal with the technology was to use it to increase student participation in writing and reading discussions, and to help them become more autonomous learners by enabling them to assess their own presentations. These goals were met. Did the technology address different learning styles? I'm not sure. But I do believe the technology added a new dimension to the class tasks and enabled the learners to interact with one another more fully and become a little bit more autonomous. Therefore, I think the project was a success.
Janet
Dear Janet,
ReplyDeleteThanks a lot for your intesting post. In fact, there are two points you made I'd like to react to. First, I completely agree with you that teachers very often and unconsciously fall prey to a sort of unthoughtful projection when considering students' learning. What worked for me won't necessarily work for my students. Here MI theory and learning styles come to the teacher's rescue. They are meant to tell us that in order to guarantee and maximize learning, students' learning styles and differnt intelligences should be taken into account when planning our lessons. The one-size-fits-all kind of lessons is a misnomer. They engage only students whose learning styles were targeted in the lesson plan. But an MI and LS-friendly lesson is not always an easy thing to do especially if you're working in a resourceless and tech-free environment. The task becomes very demanding, challenging and even impossible.
In such a tricky educational situation, technology comes as a sort of deus ex machina. Its multimediacy and versatility do offer valuable help for teachers to address students' learning styles.But it should re-stressed that technology alone is not enough to facilitate learning. It's just a tool, but with great potentials. Soundly used, it would help motivate and engage maximum students. Unsoundly used, it would cause an educational fiasco. That was my second point.
Yours,
Arbi