Learning Spaces and Learning Styles
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  • Understanding student learning in flexible learning spaces
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  • DEECD [Victoria, Australia] context
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  • Literature Review
  • Evaluation of this web page

March Network email update:

www.learningspacesandlearningstyles

"How can teachers use flexible learning spaces to cater for different learning styles?"

Welcome to the March update of the www.learningspacesandlearningstyles.com website.

There were over 300 hits to the website this month – yay!

I hope that March treated you well and you are still excited by learning and teaching.

My Action Research Inquiry Project is progressing really well. It has been exciting to see the collaboration and enthusiasm for the participations and the genuine thinking and further research.

Your feedback is most welcome and always appreciated.

MARCH UPDATE:

Some useful resources:

On FACEBOOK
-           find the International Learning Styles conference page – It’s motto is “Teach to reach every child.” The conference is in New York, however, with links such as Facebook, if we can’t attend for various reasons, we can still be kept in the loop.
-          Edutopia – some really good discussions focussing on education.
-          Ted – some really insightful discussions and current thinking [and Ted-Ed]
Do you have any favourite Facebook sites? [of course, learning spaces and learning styles FB page would love your comments]

On Twitter
-          @Learningspaces1  - check out the 27 people @learningspaces1 is following – some great discussions.

On the Web:
-          http://www.educause.edu/LearningSpaces
-          http://www.learningspaces.co.uk/index.htm [I know this is advertising, however it sparked my imagination for the art of the possible with classroom and other spaces.]
-          http://nunearp.weebly.com/thinking-resources.html - check out the thinking resources here... a whole library full. Thanks to Nune Jordaan, a friend and colleague who has willingly shared her hard work and learning.

On wikis:

-          http://edorigami.wikispaces.com/ - some great ideas on 21st century learning styles and pedagogy. See below for a sample.
From the edorigami wiki:
21st Century Learners -
Welcome to the 21st Century
Table of Contents
Welcome to the 21st Century
So what are they?
So what is a Digital Native, a Digital Child, A Neo-Millennial or 21st Century Learner?
Teens and the internet
Resources:
 Most of us have met them. If we teach in independent schools, higher decile schools or teach in more privilaged areas they are becoming increasingly common. Even the more short sighted of teachers can see them increasing as our future becomes increasingly electronic. Whether we call them Digital Natives (Marc Prensky), Digital Children (Ian Jukes), Neo-Millennials (Dieterle-Dede-Schrier) or 21st Century Learners (Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach ) they are increasingly becoming the future of teaching.
So what are they?
  They are students who are shaped by their environment. The environment they are exposed to is media rich, immediate, fast, engaging, dynamic and instant. Its electronic and digital, It’s a communication medium with instant gratification. Marc Prensky, described the array of media the students are exposed to in his papers on Digital Natives (See Readings) . This is not all of youth today, many still struggle to gain education, to have a classroom to be taught in or to have seen a computer, let alone used one. Nor is it limited to just students, Adults too, can be "Digital Natives" as their brains like the brains of our students will adapt to exposure to technology.
  - see the web link for the great diagram that I couldn't copy here :-)but for those who by good fortune have had exposure for the entire of their lives to technology the effect is huge. Digital Natives, those people who, through consistent exposure to these factors and access to a variety of digital media, whose brains are adapted to using these tools; are engaged and motivated by the use of digital technologies. They are adept in the use of digital medium, and as Dieterle-Dede-Schrier, Ian Jukes, Gary Small (MD) and Marc Prensky insist, they are wired to use these tools.

So what is a Digital Native, a Digital Child, A Neo-Millennial or 21st Century Learner?
  It helps perhaps to look at a digital native in reference to someone we are familiar with: A teacher, who is more often than not, as Marc would describe them, a Digital Immigrant. (source: Educational Origami )

- see the web link for the great diagram that I couldn't copy here :-) - see the web link for the great diagram that I couldn't copy here :-) 
These changes in preferred method and mode of learning are changing and shaping the way we teach (21st Century Teachers), how we design and build our classrooms (21st Century Learning Spaces) and how we are resourced (facilitating 21st Century Learning or taking a measure of ICT integration). For teachers to engage and educate, to facilitate and motivate, our methods of teaching must match their methods of learning; our teaching spaces must reflect their learning spaces; our teaching tools and resources must support their learning strategies. There must be, in short, a paradigm shift in education. Teachers must become 21st Century learners and more.

Teens and the internet

 PEW Internet is an American organization researching the effect of the Internet on American life. The data below is extracted from one of their presentations at CES 2009. The paper is called Teens and the Internet . These are some of the key points for me that make interesting reading. Key to this is that this is an American Life project.

·         email - 22 years old - today 87% of teens use email

·         PCs - 15 years old - today 60% of teens have desktop or laptop

·         Pong is 18 years old - today 97% of teens play computer games

·         Commercial cell phones - 12 years old -today >75% of teens have a cell phone

·         1990 Tim Berners-Lee creates internet -today 93% of teens use the internet & >90% of online teens use their browsers for cloud computing activities

·         ICQ - 1996 - today ~ 68% of online teens use instant messaging

·         First PDA - palm pilot 1996 - today ~20% of teens have pda/blackberry

·         1997 First blogs - today ~30% of online teens keep blogs and regularly post & 54% read blogs

·         Napster - 1999 - today ~35% of online teens find out about new songs by free downloads ~ 33% of online teens swap files on peer-to-peer

·         Wikipedia - 2001 - today ~ 55% of online teens use Wikipedia

·         iPod - 2002 - today 74% of teens have an MP3 player

·         MySpace - 2003 - today >70% of online teens use social network sites

·         Del.icio.us - 2003 - today 40%-50% of online teens tag content

·         Flickr - 2003 - today ~60%-70% of teens have digital cameras & ~50%- 60% of online teens post photos online

·         Podcasts – 2004 - today >25% of online teens have downloaded podcasts

·         YouTube – 2005 - today ~40% of teens have video cameras, ~25% have uploaded videos & >75% view videos on video-sharing sites

These statistics and the rest of the presentation are worth pondering. The impact of technology on teens and their uptake and adoption of these tools and technologies is formidable. Here are some of the other key points about online teens:

·         Close to 75% have created content for the internet

·         39% have shared their own creations online

·         37% have rated a person, product, or service online

·         26% report keeping their own personal webpage

·         ~25% have created or worked on webpages or blogs for others, including those for groups or school assignments

·         20% remix content they find online into their own artistic creations


Resources:
  Educational Origami - [[|http://edorigami.wikispaces.com]]

·         21st Century Teacher

·         21st Century Learning spaces

·         Facilitating 21st Century Learning

·         Digital Children

·         Neo-Millennial learning styles

·         Bloom’s Digital taxonomy

·         Traditional practice and digital alternatives

·         ICT and learning style

·         Teens and the internet - PEW Internet


Have our classrooms really changed that much?

Thankyou for visiting this website. Cheers, Mary
✕