Due: 1/22/2016
Video: Peterson Video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VLje8QRrwg&feature=player_embedded
Video: Peterson Video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VLje8QRrwg&feature=player_embedded
Please create a 100-200 word response to the video. I do not expect summaries of the readings but instead reflection about how the concepts and information can be used in the classroom. You will also comment on at least one other students.
Your posts will be done in the comments section of the main posts. Please do not summarize readings, instead point out strengths and weakness or short comings of the speaker’s proposal.
Your posts will be done in the comments section of the main posts. Please do not summarize readings, instead point out strengths and weakness or short comings of the speaker’s proposal.
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ReplyDeleteI thought the video was a good presentation of the way that teaching is moving to the visual, computer technology genre. The examples he gave of using interactive software to teach the kids instead of standing up there preaching at them, were very clear. The way to learn math would have been much better when I was younger if we had interactive games to help us learn the concepts instead of having a teacher read to you what was in the book and have an example on the board.
DeleteThe point that people learn better visually or have some kind of disability like dyslexia, make the idea of visual learning that much more interesting and valid option. In teaching computer tech the last 6 weeks or so I’ve learned that putting what I’m talking about on the projector than trying to just tell them what to do. Also on a personal note, I’ve got a young cousin that was having trouble in school, his grades were bad and he was having a hard time taking tests or explaining what he was having trouble with. I mentioned to his mother that dyslexia is very common and they had him looked at and that’s what it is.
Now they have him in a separate room for tests and a teacher helps him take his test and/or he uses a computer. He’s in 7th grade and they just got this worked out a few months ago. If we had the visual software available everywhere, he would not be anywhere near as far behind as he is now, though he’s catching up rapidly.
Until this video, I didn’t give much thought to the prevalence of words in learning. I attribute this to being raised by two librarians and growing up with my nose in a book!
ReplyDeleteI personally experienced something similar, however, when I took a Rosetta Stone Spanish course in 2014. You see a picture of a bicycle, hear the Spanish word for bicycle, and you inherently understand that the Spanish word means bicycle. The RS method is based on how small children learn their primary language - making associations between objects and the corresponding words.
Similarly, Peterson’s shapes and math games software allow associations to be made and inherent understanding to occur, so I can appreciate the possibilities for teaching students with prohibitive language abilities via this kind of image-based learning. Regardless of the reason, we need to embrace and support these and other alternative solutions to learning since the “one size fits all” approach obviously doesn’t work. It’s not right that students who are diverse in any way could be marginalized as a result.
Based on the difference that image-based software made for students like Omar, I hope the research and implementation efforts are appropriately focused.
Hi Kelly, thank you for your sharing! Your personal experience is a very good example for me that can let me make more sense about the visual literacy.
Delete-Qi
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ReplyDeleteReflection on The Video
ReplyDeleteQi Wang
Learning through visual literacy is ought to be the most original learning method. Babies begins to know the world mostly through observing the surroundings with their eyes. They will by no means learn anything through text literacy before they grow up to old enough. For example, a girl baby of 6 months old cannot read the words of milk and bottle, but when she see a bottle filled with milk she will reflect to it such as smiling. This is a firm proof that the girl baby has learned what milk and bottle are respectively through watching. As one of the most original learning methods, visual literacy is ought to have significant meaning for a person whenever this one is young or grown up. So it is valuable to address visual literacy for the learning in classrooms. Maybe, a blending teaching form of visual literacy and text literacy will help learners get their optimal achievements.
Qi - thanks for your post! I realized when reading it that you went one step further than I did when correlating imaged-based learning to how small children learn. Even more powerful than my example, yours about the baby and the milk bottle puts a fine point on the fact that we, as humans, don't necessarily need "words" to learn. Additionally, I like that you balanced this with the point that a combination of visual and text elements in teaching may give us the best of both worlds. Thanks!
DeleteQi,
DeleteI really enjoy the picture you paint w/ your words about the baby. Classes in new subject matter or a well over due refresher often return us to infancy and things are presented in a different perspective. -John
Thank you all of you!
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ReplyDeleteAfter watching this video, it amazes me that the visual tools greatly helped students improve their math skills. I think it works because the images and animations visualized abstract math concepts into concrete examples for easier understanding. Visual tools also work well in science teaching. When I taught physical science at Garfield Middle School, my supervisor always encouraged me to embed images, video clips, and hands-on demonstrations into the teaching. I could tell the students were more interested in learning via visual cues than reading text and taking notes.
ReplyDeleteHowever, although the visual aids could help students better comprehend some abstract science concepts, they might still get low scores during the tests. First, some of the students could not read carefully and fully understand the test questions. Second, some of them could not accurately express their thoughts in words for the short-answers. These two problems prevented many students from getting high-scores even they learned science really hard because they were not effective in reading and writing text. Thus, I think we need to emphasize on both language and visual communication, no one should be taken more important than another. Sometimes a picture may worth more than a thousand words, but sometimes we need to condense an idea in just one powerful sentence.
Hi, Siyang - thanks for sharing your observations about your own students, relative to this topic. It makes perfect sense to me that students would engage more with visual teaching elements than reading a book and writing notes (although I like both!) But to your point, I agree that a majority of students need their language muscles stretched regularly, to so speak, by using words to express their ideas and confirm understanding of concepts. And, except in situations where language becomes completely prohibitive to learning (as with Omar in the video), it's probably most ideal to use both visual and text literacy in a balanced way. Lastly, I love your last sentence - very impactful! Thanks!
DeleteI think what you brought out is important Siyang. We can teach using visuals but if the test is not built in the same way there will be a disconnect.
DeleteHi Siyang, your words make me remember the topics about video game based learning, such as using "Minecraft"in educational activities. Although some researches indicated that it was helpful, many students did not very keen on that. I thing one of the main reasons is teacher did not change the ways of exams according to the new teaching methods.
DeleteYes! Using visual tools in teaching should never mean it is less important to develop language skills. Peterson actually expressed similar idea in this video. Visual literacy could also make bias.What the educators should do is providing more options to students, and find out the best way to teach certain knowledge - that's the theory of TPACK - content, knowledge and technology : )
DeleteAs discussed in previous classes, I find it important to remember the power of names and naming. Classification and the like can guide our meaning... and sometimes miscue us. For example, pareidolia; "a psychological phenomenon involving a stimulus (an image or a sound) wherein the mind perceives a familiar pattern of something where none actually exists" (thanks Wikipedia, but it has happened to all of us!), tricks our minds into seeing what’s not actually there. Furthermore if we don’t have the name for the things we see, they can be associated something that they aren’t thereby potentially hindering reality and learning. That being said, I was intrigued enough with the speaker that I was driven to look up his work and his approach! Very interesting stuff w/ obvious merit to his students. While difficult to implement, I believe a mixed methods approach should be most beneficial. Another thing that comes to mind is my skepticism of screens. While the pipe we saw in the first class was not actually a functioning pipe, it was certainly a well done representation of one… Do we as learning get lost in the virtual worlds and can we convert those experiences into reality?
ReplyDeleteI like that your bring up the power of knowing a name. I seem to be hearing that theme a lot lately. Especially in my readings.
DeleteI also agree with your comment on difficulty to implement. With public schooling set up as it is now it would be very difficult with this software to be applied to a standardized test. It is however a nice tool in the teachers tool belt.
John - I agree with your point about naming/classifying things - it seems to be intrinsic to humans to do so, now that I think about it. The other thing you said that really caught my attention was about the potential for us to get lost in the virtual, and I'm sure it was no coincidence that I thought of gaming. Especially as technology evolves and younger generations experience more aspects of life virtually - it will become increasingly more important to make this distinction and text literacy may be a critical part of that process. Thanks.
DeleteI like that the speaker points out the power of visual learning software. I have used such software to help aid my struggling students in areas of study, mostly math (http://dragonbox.com/ ). I agree that math textbooks have too many words that are all trying to describe, in my opinion, a very visual process. Even from a young age when we start to count we don’t count using written word but by using our fingers, a visual representation of a quantifiable variable. I know many high school students that use a variety of hand tricks to figure out math problems most notably the nines times table (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wu3JSnRaaV0 ). Additionally from the speaker we see the success he was having with his visual math software. (side note: I would be interested to see how his experiment was set up, just took research methods and am curious about some variables that might discredit his findings like the natural maturation of the students, but that aside). Unfortunately as the speaker points out that most teaching is verbal or through the written word, why is that. Well I assume at least from my experience it is because the standardized tests are in that written format and as much as any teacher would like to deny it, they are teaching to the test. Students need to be familiar with the written mathematics and word problems. Yes a cute video game with a penguin might teach the student better but the test is not going to have a cute penguin game.
ReplyDeleteNick, you have touched a great point. I agree with you that we cannot fully replace text with visuals! specially when it comes to testing and evaluation. I think visuals are great to help the student to understand the content, but also the student has to learn how to convey his/her ideas in words in the test.
DeleteNidal
The video basically talks about active learning methodology, and how visual content is used to boost the teaching/learning process to acquire the maximum knowledge transfer to the audience. I agree with the presenter that visuals makes it a lot easier than text to understand and comprehend the content, and a very convincing reason behind this is because our minds process visual contents 60,000 times faster than text – a link of an article is provided at the end of the response-.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, textual are faster and easier to prepare than visual content and requires less effort. Furthermore, we have to be very precise in picking the visual content which can hold more than one expression.
https://rhdeepexploration.wordpress.com/2011/12/05/visuals-60000-times-faster/
Nidal Abuhajar.
our minds process visual contents faster than text, but text is faster to prepare, sounds like the law of conservation of energy :P
DeleteBoth Peterson's video and Lucas' video shared a same idea: that our education is overwhelmingly word-oriented. It is biased, and thus has created hegemony and hierarchy in the real life. As Peterson's video has shown, only a small proportion of children feel comfortable in the current education system. If we want to make sure our education is working for social justice, we do need more efforts to help children left behind.
ReplyDeleteHere are my two arguments. First, word-dominated education might be understood as a result of lack of materials and technology in the history. Even today, the download speed of text is still the fastest. Pictures, audios, and videos take much more space. Before the invention of phonograph, we do not have ways to capture sound. The only way to capture image is drawing. However, in the internet and computer era, we now have the ability to explore more ways for instruction, and that should be the responsibility (and challenge) for educators of this generation.
Second, language skill is still very important. Peterson’s talk supported this idea. Using game and visual literacy in instruction does not mean we no longer pay attention to develop children's language skills. Rather, the educators are expecting a win-win solution: students could learn science as well as language in a more visual/efficient way.
Yang Lai
Thanks for your reply to my original post. I like your idea that the educators should provide more learning and testing options to students. It will be great if we can accommodate students with dyslexia some visual aids during the test.
DeleteI agree that both language and visual skills should be emphasized, and I think the abilities of translating words into images and translating images into words are also very important. So people can use multiple ways to convey ideas. (Siyang)
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