Learning Styles

I took the Felder-Solomon online test. I found myself to be fairly balanced; I believe I have the ability to pick up learning given in different forms.   I often feel that I need to have time to process the learning and so it is not always something that is instant understanding.  The type of teaching I received growing up was very much chalk and talk and then we would copy information down in our books.  We were tested by regurgitating facts rather than understanding concepts.  I am fascinated by how smart this young generation appears and seem to have a lot of knowledge about things.  How much does our learning style adapt to what has been offered?  Does it adapt with maturity?  Or perhaps with maturity and interests is more stick ability when wanting to learn a new skill.

 I was interested to see the test was put together with consultation from Dr Linda K Silverman.  I first came across her name 5 years ago when I read her book "Upside Down Brilliance" This was in response to my son being identified by an educational psychologist as a 'Visual Spatial learner.'  It was fascinating reading and gave me appreciation and understanding of this learning style.  There have been many tears, where he hasn't understood something from school and I have then tried to teach him the concept in a very different way.  This has been the greatest influence in making me aware of asking myself are all learning needs catered for.

In the classroom there will be a range of styles auditory, visual and kinaesthetic so each lesson needs to address all learning styles.  A child that is considered an auditory learner will also benefit from these other styles.  With the continual growing access to computers there is no reason why visual instructions cannot be part of all learning experiences.  It is important to remember the saying a picture speaks a 1000 words.   To help profile the learners I can get children to complete a basic survey.  I can observe how students work with their hands or equipment (kinaesthetic) or see how they respond to visual clips.  On the other hand I can ask them if they visualise what they are seeing, do they see words or pictures in their mind?  Do they like to think about how something will work or try for it?  Similar questions to what is in the survey. 

ICT supports learning as it adds variety to the teaching, it allows you to bring in the experts and demonstrate skills.  It shows practical applications to learning and students can travel outside the classroom to another place without leaving their seats.  With the increase of computers and other equipment i.e. ipods, ipads this allows students to interact (kinaesthetic) with the equipment and part of the learning in the form of web quests and other interactive learning sites.  To be able to offer this the teacher needs confidence in using and sourcing technology.