Crowds of Style models

Composite faceEducational theorists have not yet agreed on a definitive set of Learning Styles. Coffield in 2005 identified 71 models of Learning Styles, including VAK (Dunn and Dunn), Mediation (Gregoric and Butler), Hemispheric dominance, Doing/Watching/Sensing/Thinking (Kolb), Multiple Intelligences (Gardner) and 4MAT (McCarthy).

Does this lack of consensus invalidate the theories? I asked my resident Expert Learner to suggest an explanation for the lack of unanimity.

“There are many different ways of looking at a situation, and different ways of knowing. This is like different people reviewing a book and talking about the characters using different themes.”

“I don’t learn everything the same way. I could be a visual learner in mathematics and a kinaesthetic learner in music. [Preferred] Learning style depends on what we are learning and who is teaching.”

Expert Learner carefully made clear with examples that the best way to learn a skill or content depends on the essential nature of that skill or content, among other things.

So perhaps the proper place of Learning Style theories is in a post facto poststructural analysis of a learner’s interactions. Is a ‘Learning Style’ preference not really a trait of a learner, but rather a construct of the learner and teacher, built with the available content, process and context?

What about the research? Hargreaves reported there was scant evidence up to 2005 for the (conjectured) persistence of learner’s preferences nor for the (expected) benefits of teaching in a learner’s preferred style, and this was echoed in Coffield’s review.

References:

Stupid book

John Raphael Smith 1873 Belisane and Percival under the Enchantment of Urma

It was stupid for Miss to tell us that Radcliffe‘s novels are [bad]. Now anyone who hasn’t read them or doesn’t like them has to wonder why we are studying them; and everyone who is managing to enjoy them has to wonder what is wrong with with their taste.”

Telling students to work on something that I don’t value shows disrespect for their time, energy and faith in me.

Memo to teacher: Don’t dis your subject.

Reference:

  • Image: Myrone, M 2004 Gothic Romance and the Quixotic Hero: A Pageant for Henry Fuselli in 1783. Tate Research, Spring 2004. online at http://www.tate.org.uk/research/tateresearch/tatepapers/04spring/images/ill_gothic/fig2.jpg
  • “So in claiming that the source of his ’Urma’ pictures was in the ‘Tales of Kyot’, Fuseli was claiming to be painting a subject taken from a text which never existed which was in turn meant to be a translation of a further text, which never existed either. Still, the deceit does not end, as the character of Urma named in the images Fuseli claims to derive from Wolfram’s literary sources does not appear in Wolfram’s text.”

Which of my feelings are real?

In this talk, Kay Radfield Jamison, PhD, Professor of Psychiatry, Johns Hopkins Univeristy School of Medicine gives a vivid, first person account of living with Manic Depressive illness. Some highlights:

Kay wryly tells of anonymously writing, while a young registrar, “Rules for the gracious acceptance of Lithium into your life.”

“Mania is a highly addictive state for many patients.”

“Long after my psychosis cleared and the medications took hold…. the intensity, glory and absolute assuredness of my mind’s flight made it very difficult for me to believe, once I was better, that the illness I had was one I should willingly give up.”

“Moods are such an essential part of one’s self… It was difficult to give up the high flights of mind and mood.”

Kay pays tribute to her employers, UCLA and Johns Hopkins University, whose responsibility to her patients and exemplary support for her enabled her to continue a highly productive life as clinician and researcher.

Her books.

Reference

Mobilise your molecules

Acetic Acid - Screenshots at http://jmol.sourceforge.net/screenshots/

Whipping molecules around with a stylus is fun and fast.

You know you are old if you learned to visualise molecules using physical balls and sticks. A computer coupled with an e-Whiteboard gives strong advantages.

Effectiveness: Using an interactive whiteboard, a sizable group can view, modify, rotate and discuss the compatibility of molecules more easily than we could ever do with concrete materials. The molecule built by a student can be saved for later assessment and feedback by a tutor. Software tools allow students to manipulate much more complex models than they could build, and relate the form of molecules to other properties. (For example, look at the screenshots in Sourceforge or try out the effects illustrated by Silva and Marcey.)

Efficiency: If the virtual molecules are adequate, we eliminate booking, transporting, sharing, queuing, setup, tear-down, sorting, packing, lossage and repurposing of the materials. Oh, and you elimate tripping on dropped balls because the digital models just don’t fall apart. In addition, it is easy to share digital methods with colleagues as, for example, Geoffrey Rowland does.

Flexibility: Using a screencam (such as Camtasia or Wink), students can record their investigation in animation for later review by tutors or sharing with absent students at another time. Students can revise by analysing the animation (pausing, slowing, skipping and rewinding at will) and can edit it into their own publications.

Cost: In the past, the price of molecular model kits (and attrition of those cute little balls) has limited the hands-on opportunity in science classes. This is not a problem with software! Both the server component and standalone versions of JMol are free. Other free software is available and in wide use.

References

  1. Screenshots, online at http://jmol.sourceforge.net/screenshots/ accessed 2/04/2008.
  2. Nathan Silva and David Marcey 2007, An Introduction to Jmol* Scripting**, online at http://www.callutheran.edu/Academic_Programs/Departments/BioDev/omm/scripting/molmast.htm accessed 2/04/2008
  3. Rowland, G. 2008, Molecular Structures, online at http://moodle.yeovil.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=63&edit=off accessed 2/04/2008
  4. Jmol: an open-source Java viewer for chemical structures in 3D. http://www.jmol.org/ accessed 2/04/2008
  5. Martz, E. 2007. Free Molecular Visualization Software, online at http://www.umass.edu/microbio/rasmol/othersof.htm accessed 2/04/2008

The indiscriminate punishment task

Everyone in this class is to hand me an essay tomorrow explaining and apologising for the behaviour of the three boys who shamed this class by speaking and sniggering during the assembly today. I have already spoken to you once about this, this term. All of you are responsible: all of you should have stopped them. (Year 6 teacher)

An hour later, at home, a child is trying with teary eyes to think of something she can truthfully write. After hours of sobbing and seemingly endless discussion with her sister and parents in turn, she is more distraught and still feels hopeless.

How should we advise her?

Dear child, this is like the ‘Sorry Business’. You personally didn’t do anything, but some in your group did. To mend the breach, someone in the group who is able to see it must say sorry. Dear child, you can honestly say that you do not support and are sorry about the disrespectful behaviour, and you hope never again to disappoint.

Dear child, you can treat this as a creative (fiction) writing task. Imagine that the teacher is correct. Write what she might want to hear. When finished, you may (or may not) wish to write the corrections of fact into a conclusion or appendix, with a humble invitation to discuss the events further.

Dear child, the teacher you love, admire and trust has had a bad day and shot her mouth off. It is not about you; it is about how she felt at that moment. She is probably at home with a glass of wine, kicking herself right now. However, to resolve this gracefully, there has to be an exchange of tokens. You will hand her a piece of writing, she will accept it.

Dear child, you try so hard to be perfect. So does your teacher. Today she was not perfect. Be gentle, and give her an honourable way out of her trouble.

or,

Dear child, get over it and get working. You are taking your honour too seriously.

And,

Dear teacher, your task caused most distress to the most compliant students. Treating the class as a coherent group might serve to build the esprit de corps, but it makes the group hostage to the goodwill of the least cooperative members. If the class does not dissociate itself from the dissenters and impugn the fairness of your task, you must (in fairness) be ready to listen to their dissent… Perhaps this was not your intention?

Reference:

Cost of Activboards

The cheapest possible short-term implementation for a full-time electronic whiteboard installation would require:

$800 SVGA data projector
$900 notebook computer
$2100 smaller smartboard
$400 bulb replacement each year

However, my school actually spent double that in most cases:

$1800 XGA data projectors
$500 bulb replacement each 18 months
$600 amplifier and speakers
$100 USB cable extender
$300 combination VHS/DVD multiregion player
$2600 ActivBoard 72
$2000 fixings, cables and installation service +/- 50% depending on the architecture.
(Teachers already had computers.)

This totals about $10,000 per 5 years. Teacher salaries are typically $278,633 in the first 5 years of service in NSW. (Reference 1)

An Activboard installation is thus about 3.5% of the salary of the teacher. Due to overhead and support costs, the true figure is likely to be closer to 2%.

Further research

Can we show that the effectiveness of the learning or qualitative value of the learning has increased by more than 2%?

References

  1. MacDonald, A. W., 2006, School Teachers Salary, NSW Department of Education and Training, online at https://www.det.nsw.edu.au/media/downloads/employment/awardcon/schoolteach.pdf#page=%2021

9 ActivBoard effects

A few of the differences seen at my school, that good teachers can turn into profound cultural shifts, even within a traditional teacher-directed classroom:

1. Teachers get a good chance to observe peer-instruction (and record it!) when they hand the pen over to kids. The UNDO function makes this less risky; the bright light makes it more prestigious for the child; pre-saved resources make it quick and easy to launch this situation.

2. Evaluation and registration can incorporate the recording of Teachers’ ad hoc writing. We can ‘raise the bar’ for collegial support. I expect to be surprised at how this transforms student teachers’ observation and prac experience.

3. Interrupted lessons are saved, and resumed at the next opportunity in exactly unchanged visual context, including ad hoc writing.

4. Absent students get to download a sequential recording of what was written in a lesson. (This was fantastic for our elite athletes in year 11-12.) We are still working out how this affects attitudes to attendance and in-person participation.

5. Mindmaps are easier to rearrange/restructure in software using a touch interface. Teachers with chalk rarely bother restructuring a mindmap, so are tempted to underuse or ‘lead’ contributions from students.

6. Zooming in/out on the work written during a lesson turns out to be very useful. What does a 4-page mathematical proof look like when you zoom out to one quarter scale? This also applies in map work and storyboarding.

7. Conversation skills are made explicit and modelled by the act of handing over the pen.

8. Learning handwriting. You know those kids who just can’t sit still long enough to do enough pencilled loops to get their hands to do it right? I was skeptical but then converted by seeing kids alternating gross-motor-scale letter formation with hand-writing scale work.

9. Peer cheers, meta-tasks and self-efficacy. It is pretty easy to put a child in the spotlight (erm, projector beam) doing something on the board with classmates calling instructions, corrections and praise; and then to save the session for real-time or accelerated playback … for the child to then post on the class web-page, import to a video or multimedia presentation, or project on parent’s day.

ActivBoard effects 8 – Handwriting

You know those kids in kindergarten who cannot sit still long enough to do their practice at letter formation?

Some of them seem to ‘switch on’ and absorb the ‘model’ sequence when they do it, twenty times larger. Even though the action is gross motor rather than fine-motor scale, it seems to help some kids remember. (We might call them kinaesthetic learners.)

Child handwriting on a SmartBoard

A teacher can create a practice page using Foundation fonts on her computer, and project it onto the whiteboard. Because it is simply a typed document saved on computer, the text can be changed on no notice, even while a lesson is in progress. The child can trace it, and the child’s lines are a separate layer which can be recoloured in the child’s favourite colour.

KNG4L described doing this with a SmartBoard (illustrated) in 2004. (Reference 1)

The hand-drawn layer can be hidden and revealed, so it is easy to have a few kids do this in quick succession.

Hand-drawn layers can then be saved and reviewed later, overlaid on another attempt, and played back as an animation in discussion.

Hey, kid, great job! I’ll press Replay: look at what you just did! Let’s show Mum when she comes in – and, hey, can I post it on the class homepage? Now I’ll print the screen and you can do some practice on paper

What is this doing to teaching and learning?

  1. Equipping parents to encourage kids. We can provide more visual and concrete materials for parents to use in understanding and supporting this learning. Parents who wish to help their child practice can see animations of the letter formation, which some will find easier to follow than traditional diagrams.
  2. Increasing participation by kinaesthetic learners. When erasing the board is instantaneous, we can afford to give more kids the experience of using it.
  3. Fostering peer-endorsement. When erasure and reattempt is quick and cheap, we can afford to use kids to demonstrate to peers, and more frequently set them up to correct and encourage each other.

Further research required:

Can wider tests confirm or refute the hypothesis that lettering on large scale helps letter formation on handwriting scale? If confirmed, can we identify which kids will benefit most? Can we in observational studies or interviews substantiate and describe the change in class dynamics? Have parents actually utilised the new material, and what benefits or problems do they perceive?

Reference:

  1. Kent National Grid For Learning 2004, Teaching handwriting skills with the SmartBoard in Year 2, online at http://www.kented.org.uk/ngfl/ict/IWB/whiteboards/witt2.html accessed 31/03/2008.