Learning Styles

I have always learned best when I have an instructor who is excited about what he or she is teaching.  Seeing someone who is interested and invested in the information I am learning benefits me, because I can often be pretty skeptical on the front end.  A good sense of humor in the presentation of material is always nice.

I am often reluctant to step outside my comfort zone, but I recognize that I retain knowledge better when I am asked (or required) to go a little beyond what I am comfortable with.  This is one of the things I am enjoying about this course: I would have never started a blog, got on twitter, or explored RSS feeds on my own, but having to do it for a class has given me the opportunity to see the value in these activities and expand my own learning.  

I completed the Learning Style Inventory on the PSU website, and it returned that I am a visual-tactile learner.  Makes sense to me: I get more from charts and graphs than from straight text; I retain better from hands-on experiences; my most memorable and lasting educational experiences are ones where I was involved in some activity.  

It is true that we can’t teach to every distinct learning style, so my approach has always been openness and diversity.  I try to keep my outlook flexible and stay open to trying new things to reach my students.  For me, the best way to do this has been to constantly seek input and feedback from my students.  When they do a math problem, I ask what their though process was; this is especially helpful in error correction, and it allows me to tailor my instruction to individual needs.  I advocate using as many different avenues as possible when my students are trying to learn new things: write it down, read it out loud, talk to someone else about it, listen to someone else describe how they do it, draw a diagram, etc.  My hope is that this will touch on the strengths of all students, while also allowing them to explore a variety of learning styles.  I think it is helpful to recognize your strengths, but important to constantly work on your weaknesses. 

Creative Commons

I've recently been working on a series of problems involving hot air balloons with a student.  He has an uncle who is an enthusiast, and it seemed like a good way to hook him in to the subject matter.  This is an image of a couple of hot air balloons I found on Creative Commons.

 
Photo Attribution:

 Original Image: "Weezie's Birthday Ballooning"
 http://www.flickr.com/photos/richardgiles/3613705218/
Released under an Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.0) license:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/deed.en

The most common way I use images in my teaching is to make sure the students know what I'm talking about, especially when the material we're covering references something outside of everyday life.  I work with some students who have gotten used to hiding the fact that they don't understand what is going on in class.  I got caught dealing with this lack of understanding a few times when I started working with these students, so now I find it helpful to illustrate situations with images on the front end.  It helps alleviate some of the potential embarrassment, and can spark interesting discussions.

Here's a photo of a strange flower from the Democratic Republic of Congo that I took when I visited my parents there a few years ago.

From congo