Week 7 Reflection

One thing that stood out for me in this weeks reading of Ch. 30 was the fact that the human brain takes in different types of information, i.e. visual and audio, in different ways. I guess I just assumed that I learned better using multiple ways of learning because I learned better with illustrations rather than simply reading the words from the page. When the authors said “Working memory has at least two separate subsystems for storage of data: a visual/pictorial storage area, and an auditory/verbal storage area…”, illustration 30.4 suddenly made sense when combined with the “seven plus or minus two chunks” bit. This is why teaching materials using music, mnemonic devices, movement, etc. works so well, it allows the brain to process the material using different subsystems to record the same data, thus moving it back into the long-term storage area.

The second thing that stood out for me was the discussion about how different types of audio being added to the information presented has different effects on how well your learners retain the information. I have watched so many students create PowerPoint presentations, for projects in my class or their computer class, with random sounds inserted into each slide. I can also think back to my time in the business world where business slides contained the same thing just to make the presentation “stand out” from others. I was always amused but more often slightly annoyed at those presentations and now I see that rather than adding to the presentation, they were simply “irrelevant audio”.
In the future, I can see that items added into the educational process need to be well thought out, they need to add to the material and not simply be there to add some pizzazz. We, as educators, need to make sure that we’re putting a lot of thought into ways that we can reach our different learning types in various ways without distracting the rest of the learners.

Chapter 31 had a lot of “wow” moments but as far as educational “wow” I found the paragraphs on I-PUSH and I-PULL to be interesting. How cool would it be to start all of your students working on a learning module and see how the different learners were given different levels of scaffolding to help them complete the necessary materials. I have had problems in the past, especially in math, with higher functioning students completing their work early and looking for things to do, an I-PULL module could lead these students on to higher level problems/projects to keep them occupied and, more importantly, interested in the material while the slower students had the time they needed to complete the training and get the minimum objectives covered.