Week 7: R/D12

In my opinion, Chapter 30 is the most useful chapter we have read from Reisner and Dempsey and I can easily discuss two ways I can apply the ideas in my classroom.

I have always been fascinated by brain studies so the section titled “How Humans Learn” caught my attention. I remember learning about the concept of activating prior knowledge from my education classes but the importance was never explained to me as well as the authors did on pages 314 and 315. They effectively articulated the importance of activating prior knowledge when they succinctly say “this related prior knowledge must be activate to make it available in working memory for learning.” That word “must” jumped out at me. What a strong word. I can use this imperative statement in my classroom by spending more time introducing lessons. I find myself excited to jump right into the topic of the day and often forget to prime the pump, so to speak, by getting the students thinking about related information or concepts they already know. I will now make an attempt before every lesson to either:
• ask students about prior knowledge of the subject of the day,
• create analogies that relate to what we will be learning.
• review what we have already covered in class.

On page 315 the authors point to recent studies that reinforce what we already know: “Students learn better from words and pictures that from words alone.” The surprising thing the authors point out is that students do not learn any better from animations than they do from a series of still visuals. This is useful to know. I’m all about efficiency when it comes to teaching effectively. The more time saved on creating one effective lesson means more time available making another lesson stronger. Creating and showing animations is time consuming and, according to studies, not necessarily any more effective. In fact, the authors point out that sometimes pictures with words are more effective because the learner can refer back to the still visual more easily. In my classroom I’m not going to sweat that my PowerPoints are not flashy and moving. Pictures, yes; time-consuming animations...well…I guess I can’t bring myself to totally ditch them but I’m going to cut way back.

I know we were supposed to only talk about two “tangible take-aways” but this chapter was so rich I have to mention two more.

Visuals with Audio narration, especially in the context of web delivery, I already knew was more fun but now I know studies show it is more effective…a lot more. I am getting Camtasia for my classroom and I will be doing screencasts with audio for my absent students. In the past, I might have simply gave my notes to the students who were absent.

The last item from this chapter I want to mention (I promise, this is the last) is the idea of seductive information or what I might call, going off on a tangent. The author stated that in six different studies, lessons that omitted “seductive vignettes” (read: didn’t go off on interesting, related, but off focus stories) had significantly increased learning as compared to lessons which included the seductive information. I will use this information in my classroom by remembering that just because I have a related story or information to share, it is not necessarily enhancing learning. I will keep focused more on the narrow topic of the lesson and not succumb to the temptation to beguile students with information which, though perhaps interesting and useful at another time, is off focus on the lesson being taught.