D/B12

Chapter 30

This chapter was refreshingly relevant to educators and was reminiscent of some of my previous education classes. One idea that was presented in the reading was the idea of utilizing and accessing prior knowledge while presenting new knowledge. In my experience as a student and an educator, whenever I or my students make the connection between something we've learned before and the new material, it almost always helps me remember that new material. In teaching students, I always try to refer back to an idea or concept that we've talked about before when I'm bringing up a new idea. I try to scaffold their learning by touching on previous concepts and then building on those concepts as a bridge to the new concept. I can imagine that when using technology, prior knowledge of the technology is just as important as the new material itself. If the student is expected to write about the Revolutionary War and the teacher expects the paper to be typed, that student's knowledge of Microsoft Word is just as important to complete the assignment as is their knowledge of the Revolutionary War.

Another interesting concept that the book presented was overloading visual or auditory cues to the extent that learning was actually depressed. When I look at figure 30.1, I can see where students would be motivated to learn about whatever this program was teaching, but I can also see where students would be distracted by all of the visual information. The authors go on to say that after conducting studies on learning they concluded that, "extraneous information added to spice up a multimedia presentation depressed learning by activating inappropriate prior knowledge." (p. 319) Teachers are often told that school, or perhaps a certain lesson, is boring. Teachers have to compete for students' attention with TV, video games, MP3 players and computers. It would make sense then, to use "edutainment." However, I was surprised to learn that students don't actually learn to the best of their ability with edutainment.

I plan to apply these two concepts to my teaching by continuing to address and utilize prior knowledge when presenting new ideas to my classes. I also plan to use the advice of the authors and use both text, audio and visual information in my lessons. However, I will re-evaluate the information the students are given audibly or visually to make sure they aren't getting bogged down by "seductive details."