Meeting Everyone’s Needs

The assignment for this week is to reflect on  Bates’ chapter 7 which discusses pedagogical differences of media, as well as consider our own experiences and preferences with learning through digital sources.  After thinking about this for a while and taking another look at the article, I began to think back to my journey with technology…

This was cool back in 1985ish!

Photo Credit: Pat Hawks Flickr via Compfight cc

My first computer, or I should say the first computer in our house was a Tandy 1000 I believe, complete with an actual floppy disk drive!  Us kids didn’t really use it all – I don’t remember there being any games or anything fun for us to do with it but whenever mom or dad went on it we would come watch to see just what this thing was!

In my elementary and high school days, I would definitely describe myself as a visual learner,

Photo Credit: London Permaculture Flickr via Compfight cc

Learning Styles

similar to how Jayme described her school days as well.  I preferred videos and print over audio.  Whenever I have had to study for exams, it helps me immensely to write out study-notes.  Once they are written down I can often visualize the page in my head while writing the test.  Even now, when wanting to remember something, I will write it down using a pen and paper.  If I am putting things into my phone I will have to set up an alarm to remind myself what I have to remember otherwise it will be lost!

Continuing on through university, I continued to learn best through lecture style while taking notes and taking notes from text book readings.  In the only Bio class I had, I really enjoyed the lab component.  It was hands-on learning at its best, being able to see an manipulate what it was we were learning about.

Now in my own classroom, I have many students that require assistive technology to meet their learning needs.  This is a mixed blessing as these devices have not always been super “user friendly” but have definitely gotten better.  I still teach through a lot of lectures, PowerPoints, and videos.  I am trying to incorporate more exciting technology such as Plickers and Kahoot into my classes as the students are instantly engaged.

Playing games in class 🙂

Photo Credit: Luigi Mengato Flickr via Compfight cc

I primarily enrolled in this class to expand my technology horizons to further my learning as well as ensure that my students are learning in the best way possible while also being engaged in the process!

When reading Bates’ Chapter 7, I found her 5 critical questions to ask yourself in order to select the best technology.  I had never considered before reading this, that the type of media chosen will portray the information differently from the other types.  Bates discusses how using different media sources will give different kinds of information.  I totally agree that using text, for example, is very beneficial for structuring linear sequencing where as audio would be better suited when focusing on the spoken language.  For example, I think back to learning the french language and how hearing different pronunciations of words would help more that just reading them as the letters would take on different sounds.

Have their been any tools you have used in your classroom that have been hugely beneficial to you and your students?  Do you find that students are needing more technology incorporated into their daily learning in order to remain engaged?