One size can’t fit all…
Written on October 5, 2011 – 10:41 pm | by bballa
A theme I saw within the EDIT772 discussions was how to make a tool conform to your way of learning rather than the learning conform to the tool. We were always asked: “How would you sue this tool” or “How could this tool be 
better?” Both suggest that the tool must fit the learner. When it comes to e-learning, this conversation must continue and must listen and learn from all sides that are involved. This includes the teachers, the providers of the tool, and the students. Primary school traditionally is set up in a way that the student has to force themselves to learn something a certain way. For example, there are those who are visual learners and those who are not. There are students who can learn all they need to know from reading a text and there are those who get lost in a sea of words trying to understand. Both are learning the same thing, but the tool does not fit the learner. Web 2.0 tools can be customized in a way so that as long as the core principles are established, anyone can learn the same thing in a number of ways. As progress is made, with the learner in mind, then learning will be easier and customizable. There must be standards in learning. Students must have and show proficiency in something in order to function in life. However, reaching that standard needs to be more flexible to the needs of each and every student.
3 Responses to “One size can’t fit all…”
You bring up a really good point. Right now it seems like the web and it’s tools are scattered, unorganized. As an older student who returned to the academic environment after a long period I have experienced a big learning curve just about each semester as each instructor introduces new technology to present and organize instruction, this on top of learning the content. Yes, this has been important for me to master as this is the field that I am in, but it doesn’t mean it hasn’t been challenging, and that those that are not in this field aren’t experiencing the same challenge. Are we making it more difficult for learning to occur or easier? Right now I’m not sure!
Hopefully the industry will adopt best practices, adopt standards, so that students can get familiar with the learning tools, while allowing for learning differences.
Your picture captured it all! I agree that we are well beyond the one size fit’s all teaching and learning style. This seems, to me, to be the reason why our smartest students are being disciplined more and dropping out of school. They simply want to learn on their own. Many of these kids are experts in technology – specifically in social software. I’d like to see a school adopt their teaching practices specifically for these brilliant drop-outs.
I recently supported a science teacher as she attempted to do this very thing with her class. The standard was that students learn the different forms of energy and how energy is transferred. (ex: You eat fruit:chemical energy –> you have energy to run around the track: mechanical energy) Students were required to learn about this using any means they find interesting – textbook, YouTube, Khan Academy, Google, etc. Then, they create a movie showing images or video that could be used as a teaching tool to teach students everything they need to know about energy. Students were held to the same standards, but they could learn, and show their learning in a way that is meaningful to them.
This experience made teaching exciting for me again, and I believe learning exciting to the students again!
I feel you are definitely preaching to the choir. I like that web 2.0 tools work to customize themselves for the needs of the user. Too many times as you have stated in education we force students to learn one way when there are multiple modes to gain knowledge. I wish that these kinds of tools were available for elearning when I was in school. Learning things especially math from a different perspective can help students who don’t grasp things visually and vice versa for the wordsmith students out there.