Learning Styles

My Learning Style(s)
While we all learn differently from one another, and differently based on what it is that we are trying to learn, we can definitely look at trends.  When I am learning something in the Cognitive Domain (and to some degree, also the Affective Domain) I tend to be an auditory learner.  I know that I'm in the minority when I say that I learn best from lectures or reading.  I like to debate controversial issues in person and read the comments section after articles.

I recently started coaching pole vault.  I have no experience with it whatsoever.  The best way for me to learn was to watch YouTube videos.  In the most effective ones, experts narrated what the vaulter was doing before, during, and after he did it.  I found this to be very helpful.  This is still considered part of the Cognitive Domain because I am not actually doing the pole vaulting.  I am learning how to do it (and more importantly how to coach it), rather than actually doing it myself.

When I am learning something in the Psychomotor Domain I learn best by doing.  When I first learned how to use Prezi I just wanted to dig right in and do it.  Listening to a lecture or watching a video would not do it for me.  This was one of those things that I just needed to do for myself.

Most Effective Strategies

For me, I prefer to learn basic knowledge (e.g. vocabulary) from lectures.  They are one of the most efficient ways to get knowledge from the instructor to the student.  More complex knowledge, where I draw on my prior knowledge, mix it with the new knowledge, and create new learning is best done by "doing."  I really like it when I can pick a seemingly minor aspect of something and take it in my own direction.  I like being the expert on one or two things.  Using programs that allow me to create creative displays/presentations is fun for me.  I think students like this too.

Least Effective Strategies

I honestly don't think that I've seen too many terrible strategies.  The times that they go horribly wrong are either because of teacher incompetence with the strategy, misuse of the strategy, or external factors such as student behaviors.

Creative Commons Lab

Creative Commons Image

The Creative Commons search was pretty cool once I got the hang of it.  I initially started using the Google Images search, but did not find many quality images.  Honestly, it felt like I was searching in 1998.  Most of the images that appeared were unrelated to my query.  Once I switched to the Wikimedia Commons tab I had a lot more success.

Tectonic Plate Boundaries
The image that I chose for this assignment shows the three main types of tectonic plate boundaries (pictured right).  If I still taught Earth Science I could use this image in a number of ways.  I could ask students to identify what types of plate boundaries are represented at 8,9, and 10.  I could ask them the term for what is happening when 5 is going under 6.  There are a lot of different directions I could go with this image.

Photo Attribution

This image was created by someone working for the USGS (part of the federal government), so it is part of the public domain.  It is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
Original image: "Tectonic Plate Boundaries 2"
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tectonic_plate_boundaries2.png
by: Eurico Zimbres, USGS

Flickr

After we graduated from CMU in 2007, my wife and I moved to Toksook Bay, AK to begin our teaching careers.  As requested, I posted a link to my Flickr page.  The only picture that I have on there right now is the view from my house.  I also licensed the photo with Creative Commons :)

Atomic Learning

Prezi

I've used Atomic Learning before, and love that it has so much to offer.  Today, I viewed a lot of Prezi tutorials.  As is the norm with Atomic Learning, they had something for everyone.  They had tutorials for beginners as well as those who are familiar with Prezi.

One thing that I learned from the "Downloading a portable Prezi for presenting" tutorial is that you can download a Prezi without buying Prezi Desktop.  I was surprised, because I had heard that the only way to do this was to buy Prezi Desktop.  These versions of the files are not editable.  Embedded movies from sites like YouTube will work if there is an Internet connection.

We have some tech-savvy teachers at my school that already use Prezi.  We also have some novices that are truly trying to integrate new technologies into their classrooms.  One of these novices was so proud of himself when he had created his first Prezi.  He had it all ready to go.  Then the school's network went down, and he was left with nothing.  Of course he had another plan, but he wanted to introduce the day's topic with Prezi.

To prevent situations like that from happening in the future, I will make sure that Prezi-using teachers are aware of how to download a portable Prezi for presenting.

Delicious

My favorite Delicious tutorial was "Displaying tags using the tag rolls option."  I had always seen word clouds on websites and blogs before.  I'd even used some word cloud generators before.  But I didn't even know that one could create a word cloud based on Delicious tags.  I can see this being useful, possibly on my blog.  Anywhere that tech users visit to learn more about technology, this application of tag clouds could be beneficial.

ActivInspire Pro

A teacher at my school approached me with a question regarding his Promethean Board last Friday.  He heard that it was possible for him to record his lecture in advance for a day that he wouldn't be at school.  I own Camtasia Studio, but doubt that I could get my school to buy it for him.  I know that there are some open source solutions, but wanted to first give ActivInspire (the company that makes Promethean Boards) a chance first.  This tutorial showed me that it is in fact possible (and easy) for this teacher to record his lecture as an .avi file.  I figured it had to be possible, but I was surprised that it was so easy!