learning styles – The Ice-Cream Coffee Teacher

The Design Challenge

The challenge to recreate our classrooms using Sketch-Up is a very welcome one. I’m a true believer that places convey feelings and so I’m always conscious of what feelings my home and classroom produce. (Confession: I once had ,yes “had”, to make valances to cover the ugly institutional windows.)

Although I now work online, our blended school has learning labs. I took the opportunity to design the “ideal learning lab” in our newest lab space which was a blank slate the last time I saw it. It’s a beautiful space with a glass wall between the main room and office building in which it’s located and huge glass windows letting in tons of natural light on the other side. There are two student spaces leading from the main room and an office space for staff.

Design Influences & Goals

Here are the big questions I considered and the pedagogy that influenced my design goals.

What message should this space send students and teachers? What design choices will communicate most effectively?

Sir Ken Robinson, a world renowned specialist creativity, is straight forward in his observation that the current schools views students as a product to be mass produced. He observers that, “the whole process of public education came about primarily to meet the needs of the Industrial Revolution . . . and the current system doesn’t just represent the interests of the industrial model, it embodies them. To begin with, there’s a very strong sense of conformity. Second, the pedagogical model is based on the idea of transmission. . . . And the third big feature is the hierarchy of subjects: You have science and math at the top, and languages, then the arts further down.” (OWP/P Architects, 2010). His point is well taken that this is not how to encourage creative, critical thinkers.

GOAL: Create a space that is set-up to move easily between a variety of subjects and a variety of instructional methods

How can the design encourage higher level thinking from various intelligences?

Howard Gardner is perhaps best known for his Theory of Multiple Intelligences, an idea claiming that there is a wide variety of intelligence and now simply one human intelligence easily assessable by a psychometric instrument. In thinking about how school can reflect a variety of intelligences, he observes that, “School would be far more individualized that ever before. . . Young people would also be able to keep their own records of what’s been learned, what’s been produced, critiqued, etc. . . it is also important to display scientific, artistic, and historic works that have been fashioned by students and teachers.” (OWP/P Architects, 2010)

GOAL: Create a space that provides for choice and a wide range of ways to explore, experiment, express and share learning.

The Design

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Dreaming BIG

To translate this plan into the real world, there would need to be a lot of money (a conservative estimate would be at least $15,000) and a lot of DIY building going on. Keep in mind that this space houses ALL subjects and content areas across the gambit of high school, so for a whole high school set-up this would run pretty cheap. Within PBL learning experiences we could build most of the straight forward furniture like tables, desks and shelving and certainly create all of the artwork ourselves. White boards are also fairly cheap to make if you use shower liner. The labs already have computers. 1-2 weeks of intensive work would complete most of the transformation.

References

OWP/P Architects, VS Furniture, & Bruce Mau Design. (2010). The third teacher: 79 ways you can use design to transform teaching & learning. Retrieved from http://thethirdteacherplus.com/s/Ch2-TTT-for-Web-0y6k.pdf

Teaching Context

I work for a blended online school creating curriculum and assessing learning artifacts. It’s a lot like teaching using FB, blogs and forums – which for me is a bit of a dream come true! 21st century skills are important to us; we like/use Tony Wagner’s 7 survival skills, but Hobbs’ 5 literacies which I learned about this week in CEP 810 (Access, Analyze, Create, Reflect and Act) are also reflected. (Hobbs, 2011)

Lesson’s Context

The lesson is embedded within a larger PBL project introducing Researchers to WAY Program. The final product will be a Personal Learner Profile answering the question – How will PBL work best for me? They have four choices – one for each of the VARK learning styles – a picture collage, a playlist, a brochure or a learning tour. They will create something that represents and explains their learning style, setting (each kid’s home/lab set-up is different), learning goals and personal organization plans.

For this step they will focus on learning about their learning style – the goal is that this will help them embrace their strengths and develop a more robust self-concept. One of the things that many of the 21st century skills require (whoever’s list you’re using) is that a person must learn to trust themselves and their abilities. That is why doing some learning about themselves at their start with the program is so crucial. Thomas and Brown note that in order to succeed in ever changing learning systems students must “learn to generate content that represents their learning.” (2011) In many ways this is the big aim of the bigger project, and it requires some instruction regarding learning styles here at the start.

In terms of Hobbs’ literacies, they will:

Access: Given resources, but must determine which will be most helpful for them in their context. Learning to use resources appropriately by learning citation. (Access is linked with Analyzing in Wagner’s list, and both of those apply here.)
Analyze: Read resources through the lens of “what will help me most?” Apply their learning to their personal situation.
Create: The final product options will give them a choice in how they communicate their learning – images, video, etc. – and encouraged to share with the learning community at large.
Reflect: Thinking about who they are and how they can leverage these strengths pushes them to reflect on themselves in a clearer way. This learning will also help inform future reflections.
Act: This will come later when they leverage what they’ve learned to create personal goals. (Linked to what Wagner calls “Initiative.”)

I’m hoping to teach them to navigate our program, understand who they are and how that impacts their learning process.

The Lesson

Documents to Explore:

“Step 1:What Is Your Learning style?”

Students will encounter:

References:

Hobbs, R. (2011). Digital and media literacy: Connecting culture and classroom. Thousand, Oaks, CA: Corwin/Sage.

Thomas, D., & Brown, J. S. (2011). A new culture of learning: Cultivating the imagination for a world of constant changes. Lexington, Ky: CreateSpace?.

Wagner, T. (2015). “Seven Survival Skills: As Defined by Business Leaders.” Retrieved from http://www.tonywagner.com/7-survival-skills.