Me and My Learning Style

I am trying to figure out how to put a picture of my learning style inventory results in this post... I may be a digital native, but I really don't know much about this blog stuff.

Anyhow, when looking at my learning style results, you can see (well, I can see) that I am a slightly reflective learner (3) in the active vs. reflective learning category, I have a moderate preference for sensing learning (5) in the sensing vs. intuitive learning group, I lean slightly toward verbal learning (1) in the visual vs. verbal class, and I have a highly moderate preference for sequential learning (7) in the sequential vs. global sorting. When considering how I have preferred to spend my educational career, I realize that my learning style inventory is quite correct in deciphering how I like to study and learn. The ideas that I prefer to work out problems in my head, usually without discussion, that I work methodically and practically (and neatly) in a sequential form, and that I slightly prefer verbal lessons are all true. Even while I was in high school I remember knowing that I was an auditory learner above visual. I have always benefited greatly from hearing an explanation and taking notes, though seeing the example in addition to hearing it only helps me.

Because of my learning style preferences, I believe that any multimedia lesson that is filled with charts and graphs and provides little verbal, or at least written, explanation of these graphs would be very challenging for me. In addition, a lesson including before and after results projects, experiments, or even just the problem and solution in a mathematics class would also be difficult for me. Since I am a sensing and a sequential learner, I only really understand information when I am given step by step examples – meaning I need all the information that goes between the start and the finish to grasp the concept. Furthermore, without any verbal or written explanation, I also find it difficult to understand certain ideas. While I am practically balanced between visual and verbal learning on the inventory, I have always found myself to be more successful in courses that provide more than just a visual example. Because of all these points, I always disliked courses in college that were powerpoint-based. First of all, I cannot write as fast as a professor can talk through and click toward the next slide, so I was always falling behind in notes. But more importantly, perhaps, powerpoint presentations often contain little more than a lot of charts and graphs and simple initial & final info outlines on the slides. If a professor did not go into much detail verbally or through additional writing on the blackboard, I often was unable to understand the concept because I wasn’t given the middle information. While my learning style has certainly expanded through the different teaching styles I experienced in college, I still find it difficult to learn without some sort of supplemental explanation of the steps within a concept.


I think that I would like to gain more information about multimedia in terms of student webpage production. I really like the idea of elementary school students being able to create world wide multimedia as a project – I believe that if students are able to take the information that they are gaining, and turn it into a coherent, readable, and accessible form for others to learn from, then they are gaining a true understanding of the concept. I firmly believe that you really only know and understand a topic when you are capable of teaching said topic to someone else. Therefore, I think that through webpage production, students are not just gaining information to put together on a poster, but that they are also forced to turn that information into a comprehensible format for others, thereby demonstrating their own understanding.

Marc Prensky Response

I found Marc Prensky's "Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants" to be very interesting. I had never read an article like this before, where the author is rallying for students to not only use technology in school, but to bring that technology into class with them. Also, never before had I really thought about the differences that exist between digital natives and digital immigrants.

Prensky's points about the differences in the way the two groups use technology were both eye-opening and funny, mostly because they were so very true. Thinking about how digital natives like myself and those younger than me simply accept the influence of technology in our everyday life and easily incorporate it, and those digital immigrants who are trying and yet stuck between the two groups - printing out their emails and not understanding the instantaneous nature of technology definitely made me smile and think of those people I know in all levels of technology. One of the differences that I found most interesting and true was the digital native distaste for "reading the directions" vs. the digital immigrant who pours over the manual before touching any of the parts. Even as a child, I remember just grabbing the pieces to a new toy and figuring out how to put it together, while my mom questioned "aren't you going to read the directions?!" incredulously. I thought it both amusing and interesting that you can see the beginnings of the new digital native language and the digital immigrant accent before the advent of the affordable personal computer, back in the land of toy dolls that talk.

As far as technology in the classroom, I agreed with Prensky on his ideas that today's students speak a different language - after all "lol" "brb" etc have become part of the everyday verbal language, beyond that of the instant message. School has become a place where students definitely do have to "power down" and leave those gagets that have become a part of them away from them, likely feeling that they have entered a boring past. How can school be a place to educate, train, and inspire those of the future when those students feel stagnated by school itself? Prensky, then, is right in that technology must be incorporated into schooling so to truely engage students and to move toward the future. However, I felt that Prensky was somewhat shortsighted in his article, assuming that all students have access to this personal technology. This seems to be a shortcoming in many people who are proponents of the technological education. Not all students have access to basic life necessities, let alone cell phones, laptops, wifi, etc. Therefore, while schools should encourage input, advice, and technological influence from their digital natives, they must also take on the technology revolution themselves and institute programs that provide access to these technological resources for their students. Schools must find a middle ground between banning technology and making it the sole source of school - school must not become "edu-tainment", but a source of education that involves technology.

First Post

Here I go...