This week we had a very important topic for discussion. As I already said in the discussion earlier this week, I believe learning styles of the students are the second thing a teacher should have on his/her mind (after the objectives). I studied at the university after Howard Gardner presented his ideas on learning styles, but this theme was not in my curriculum, and I never heard my colleagues discuss or define learning styles of students… I would address different learning styles only intuitively. The first time I started reading on the theme was several weeks ago, when as a part of our weekly task we had to say what type of learning styles we were aiming to address. I am much grateful to Hassan and Vijay for summarizing Mr. Gardner’s ideas and offering technology based tools for each of the learning styles. Thank you, guys, you did a great job!!!! And Salam raised a very important question of students losing their interest though teacher is trying to make the best of the class. I did not write this in the conference, because I do not think my following idea a scientific one, and people might disapprove, but this is what comes from my personal experience – in some groups I feel inspired and elevated and have successful classes, but with other students I might feel dissatisfied and even frustrated. It turned out that if I have the majority of students in my class belonging to the same astrological element as me, I have better classes. And then families students come from also play a great role in their teaching – for example, students having no father or mother are rarely motivated. And there many other factors that influence the interest of students and the success of a class.
I learnt much from this Yuliya, she has her blog on edu.com, and she could not read my blog and she cannot read the blogs of her webmates on blogger.com, because she experienced just the same difficulty with it as me, but, unfortunately, did not find the way out. I am happy I could create the blog on blogger.com and feel a part of the group. I think I would have died of curiosity had I not managed to have my blog here. I also found out that Yuliya’s group they found how to convert a PP presentation to Prezi, and she used it with her students. I am going to ask her to teach me, too!!! ;) :)