New session. We’re on Learning Styles now. We’re taking a look at the different preferences that people have when they’re learning, such as learners who prefer sound vs. those who prefer quiet, those who prefer bright lights to dim lighting, warm vs. cold, and so on. Same thing goes for emotional elements. Some students are motivated, persistent and responsible. Those students have different needs than other students without those characteristitcs.
This is going to drive me nuts. There is an obvious problem with the remote control that the presenters are using to go through their power point presentation. After every slide, they either go way too far forward or backwards. They are standing no more than seven feet away from the laptop that they are using the remote control on! However, instead of simply walking up to the computer and hitting the space bar, they keep trying to use the remote again and again and again. End result? After every slide we have a 1 minute frustration break as the presenter goes all the way back to the beginning of the presentation and then tries to find their place again. Another member of the team finally walked up to try to help and I thought she was going to just click on the laptop for him, but instead she’s trying to use the remote control too! Same result! And a USB mouse is about a foot in front of her on the table. Which is more rude, me knowing that they can just use the mouse or arrow keys and not speaking up or interrupting the presentation to show them how to use their own technology? I’m choosing to just let them do what they’re doing and being passive aggressive by writing about it here. Personality flaw? Perhaps. Subject for another day. For the record, my guess is that the battery is going on the remote.
Ok, back to the presentation (I think I missed four or five slides). We’re still talking about different learning styles that students have. He’s saying that some students need to be eating, drinking or chewing while learning. That stimulation does help some students. I chew on pens constantly or shake a leg. Perhaps if I chewed gum, it would help to release some of the energy I have.
More types. Day learners vs. night learners, learners who like to move around vs. those who stay sitting down for hours, global vs. analytic, impulsive vs. reflective, etc.etc. No surprise, I’m very analytic. I like things sequential, step by step. I’m very methodical and a big believer in planning before a project. I’m not very artistic, in some ways I’m not very creative.
Ok, done with Learning Styles. It was chock full of traditional stereotypes. Some people like sitting at a desk, others like lying on a sofa. I would love to see the presentation updated for the 21st century. Some students like going to one web site and reading it through before clicking on a link, others open 15 browser windows and read pieces from each before jumping to the next site. Some prefer reading through the help menu while others like clicking on each function just to see what happens. I think it would be fascinating to update the usual learning styles shtick to take advantage of 21st century skills. I’d be curious to how many variations there really are. Do students have iTunes open? Do they have AIM on? Do they chat with one person or 30 people? Lots to consider along those avenues.