Week 9, 4 December

Reflecting on week 9 assignment, the discussion dealt with learning styles and how they may be enhanced through using technology in the language classroom. As always, we were given several reading materials to discover, discuss and next reflect about the use of technology to enhance learning styles.

Gardner distinguishes 9 types of intelligences nowadays:

1. Verbal-Linguistic Intelligence (speaking, listening, reading or writing)

2.    Logical-Mathematical Intelligence (reasoning, problem solving and numbers)

3.  Kinesthetic Intelligence (making physical exercises, movements)

4.    Visual-Spatial Intelligence (visually delimiting the space)

5. Musical Intelligence (hearing or producing sounds)

6. Interpersonal Intelligence (discussing, working in groups or cooperatively)

7. Intrapersonal Intelligence (working in isolation or by reflecting on their emotions and feelings)

8. Naturalist Intelligence (the contact with nature)

9. Existentialist Intelligence (philosophical reflections about the human beings’ existence)

After reading articles on Gardener’s work, it is important to say that by identifying learners' strengths and weaknesses, teachers could re-design their classes by integrating multiple intelligences in order to cover different learning styles in the same class. This fact could help teachers facilitate their students' learning process.

It is true that technology can help provide a range of learning styles in the classroom. Each of our students is different and when designing a lesson or a course, we should take into consideration different intelligences and learning styles as well. Photos, music, logical exercises, puzzles or experiments – all these things once brought into the classroom by a teacher can be now replaced by a computer and the Internet. Catering for different styles, we should try to use a variety of tools that technology provides us with, for example:

-          Photos, films, PowerPoint presentations, flashcards or pages with maps for visual learners,

-          Puzzles, crosswords for logical / mathematical

-          Music, films, reading online stories, jazz chants  for musical ones,

-          TPR in a film for Bodily/Kinesthetic,

-           Vocabulary and grammar exercises, spelling sites (http://www.spellingcity.com/) , reading, stories and poems for Verbal-Linguistic,

-          “sighseeing” the sites about nature, “virtual travelling” to far-away places for Naturalist

-          Using social networking, peer teaching (checking by posting on a blog) for interpersonal

-          Journal log = blog keeping for intrapersonal

If we vary the activities that we use in your lessons, we are sure to cater for learners with different learning styles. What is important, the learner’s profile is changing and all the intelligences work together, so we should not focus on one only.

Finally, the last and the most important part of this course is the final project report to be submitted   on 6^th Friday!!! Still some work to be done but thanks to peer-reading by our course partners, I do hope to polish it. Thank you Akbar and Muhammad.

Warm regards