Multimodal Learning Through Media: What Research Says

In the article Multimodal Learning Through Media: What Research Says, Charles Fadel (Global Lead, Education) states, “There is a lot of misinformation circulating about the effectiveness of multimodal learning, some of it seemingly fabricated for convenience. As curriculum designers embrace multimedia and technology wholeheartedly, we considered it important to set the record straight, in the interest of the most effective teaching and learning.”

Remember this? <---cute pun.

We remember...

10% of what we read

20% of what we hear

30% of what we see

50% of what we see and hear

70% of what we say

90% of what we say or do

According to this article, the "Cone of Learning" idea created by Edgar Dale,is often misused. The Meriti Group disapproves of this idea because the shape of the cone "is not related to retention, but rather to the degree of abstraction." The only beneficial truth in the cone is that towards the bottom of the shape when more senses are engaged.

So how to people learn?

Educational Psychology Refresher

3 types of memory:

-sensory memory

-working memory

-long term memory

Answer to...how people learn:

• students preconceptions of curriculum must be engaged in the learning process (trigger a priori knowledge).
• expertise is developed through deep understanding (engage in a deep thought process)
• learning is optimized when students develop "metacognitive" strategies (think about thinking/ predict outcomes/ make sense of something)

So... teaching styles that include a variety of media are most effective because more senses are triggered. Major increases in achievement levels are possible when teaching styles "adapt to include a variety of media, a combination of modalities, levels of interactivity, learner characteristics, and pedagogy based on a complex set of circumstances." However, sometimes it's best to for students to work individually to build automaticity.

This article has a lot of meat. It's hard to summarize, but I enjoyed the section on Future Research. I am most interested in "the importance of the attention and motivation of the learner." It talks about reducing distractions to focus the learner. This is an important thing to think of when using multimodal teaching. It's cool, and I will consider multimodal teaching. However, it can't be too over the top. Like all technology, it needs an effective purpose.

Life on the Screen, Digital Directors Guild, and Podcasting

Life on the Screen
In the interview Life on the Screen, George Lucas expanded on his views of education. Not surprisingly, he thinks that film and other artistic media have an overlooked but important role to play in the classroom. He described the need to stop looking at art and music as separate topics taught to the emotional mind, and instead incorporate them in other classrooms. Many of his opinions aligned with modern learning theories, but one statement was fairly novel. He said,

"One of my concerns is that we're advancing intellectually very fast, but we're not advancing emotionally as quickly."

He pointed out that it is common to see highly educated people (professors with PhDs, anyone?) who are clueless when it comes to good form in presentation and visual communication. This comes from an educational system rooted in 19th century thinking, according to George Lucas, clinging to tradition in the face of a society and business climate that demands change and flexibility. He also touched on the outdated idea of education "as a way of storing facts," and its impossibility with our current rate of information expansion.

Digital Director's Guild
The Digital Director's Guild is a project to bring digital moviemaking into K-16 education. Moviemaking's flexibility makes it a powerful learning tool, because it can pull from many different theories of learning, and the final product can take so many forms. The DDG website lists guidelines created by the North Central Regional Educational Laboratory (NCREL) for "new skills that students will need to excel in the Digital Age." These are

• Digital-Age Literacy
• Self-direction
• Teaming, collaboration, and interpersonal skills
• Prioritizing, planning, and managing for results

Projects using digital moviemaking incorporate them well. There are broken links all over the examples page, but here are a couple that work.

Math Movie Minute
This video created by middle schoolers is a good example of cross curriculum teaching. While explaining how to find the surface area of a pyramid, students show understanding of storytelling, use of humor, editing, and sound mixing.

Immigration iMovie
In this video, students presented immigration experiences from a first person perspective, essentially role playing. I chose this because it is a project that could easily have been assigned as a paper, which would have faded into the background of so many other papers in the students' memories. Doing a project like this is more likely to be both pleasant and memorable for the students.

Podcasts
I'm fond of podcasts because they remind me of the days when the radio ruled the entertainment scene (not that I was alive, then). The defining feature of a podcast is how it is delivered. A program is used to automatically fetch the latest audio or video file from each (and every) given podcast the user is subscribed to. It is not uncommon for users to also automate the process of moving the file onto their portable player, although many people listen to podcasts on their computers. The incredible ease with which they allow subscribers to follow is a major draw.

My favorite example was the Mathgrad Podcast's description of how people solve Rubik's Cubes in terms of set and group theory. I'm not convinced it is "math for everyday people" as described (I think most people's eyes would gloss over during the math portion, here), but it is an interesting presentation, and could open the door for discussion in a classroom.

Copyright and Fair Use in the Classroom

Obviously copyright and fair use are complicated issues, but I felt the article did a pretty thorough job of summing it up. Here are five principles I felt are important for both teachers and students to know:

• As a creator, your the works that you author (in a "fixed" format) are protected under copyright laws. However, there are some things that are excluded from this, like ideas and processes that are not written down, and works by the U.S. government.
• Generally, use of works under copyright is consider "fair use" when it falls under the following categories: 1) criticism or commentary; 2) news reporting; 3) research and scholarship (and generally, more factual than creative use is more permissible); 4) nonprofit educational uses; and 5) parody.
• Using works under copyright for nonprofit use is okay; using it for commercial purposes is not.
• The article gave five basic rules about fair use:

1. Using works under copyright is okay when you are incorporating it into a new work, but not if you are just copying it.
2. Using a work is not okay if you are competing commercially with that work.
3. Just because you give credit to the source doesn't mean it's fair use.
4. How long is the work? How much are you using? The more you use (relatively) the less likely it is that you are operating under fair use policy.
5. Just as you shouldn't use too much of a work, you shouldn't necessarily use the "heart and soul" of that work.

• Finally, if the work is unpublished, it's probably not okay to use it under fair use.

I think one of the best ways to address these issues with students would be to teach a class on copyright laws and fair use. I have never actually had this topic addressed in a class in such a concise way. Usually teachers just comment that as long as works are used in an academic setting, using work under copyright is okay. I would also encourage students to ask me whenever they might have a question about fair use. Finally, it might be beneficial to have a brief seminar for teachers on fair use policy by a lawyer who knows his way around the law and could answer questions, so that teachers would be well-informed in order to teach their students.