When “less is more”

This week I read through Richard E. Mayer’s Multi-media Learning chapter on the “Coherence Principle.”  In his principle, he says that “less is more”.  I’ve been struggling a bit recently in my trigonometry classes keeping the student’s attention when lecturing about graphing trigonometric functions such as Sine, Cosine, Tangent, etc.  I watch the students stay with me for a while, but then, I see most of them loose interest.  Some of them start nodding off, others start working on the homework assignments and then others are in la-la land.  Only a few stay with me in the lecture. 

 After reading Mayer’s Coherence Principle, I am starting to second guess some of my teaching methods.  I’ve been wondering if they are in overload (Mayer’s limited capacity principle)  or if I loose them because they are lost in the concepts. I think it may be a combination of the two reasons.  I really haven’t figured out how to present this graphing information differently, because there is a lot of material to cover, but I know I need to figure out a different way. 

 Although Mayer’s principles and concepts are designed for multimedia learning, I am finding that they can also apply to other forms of learning.

Virtual Reality

Wow.  The world of virtual reality is creeping up upon us.  I never really considered that it would be a new wave of the future in educational technology but after looking into it, I see how it could definately impact our world.  People can create atavars and visit other virtual environments.  I saw information on attending virtual conferences.  I wonder if this will lead to us never having to leave our homes to attend conferences or such.  I’ve heard of virtual schools and thought that it was a good idea but I feel that there needs to be face-to-face social interaction among students – this is a vital part of the growth and learning process.

I was watching TV a couple of days ago and I can’t remember if it was CSI or Law and Order, but a homicide investigation focused on a virtual reality game where the players created atavars and lived in a virtual world.  It seemed to me that the players created atavars with characteristics and behaviors that were much more exagerated and usually extroverted than their characteristics in real life.   The crime in the show was actually solved by seeing who was playing the game at the actual time of the real homicide.  I watched this show before I looked into virtual reality so after I looked into what the current trends in virtual reality are, I kept flashing back to this show.  I am interested to see how far this phenomenon goes! 

“Educators Got Game”

I recently read an article by Cindy Long called “Educators Got Game” in the October 2007 issue of NEA Today (p 42-43)    http://www.nea.org/neatoday/0710/trythis.html .  In the article, three or four teachers talk about using video games to reinforce concepts.   Examples that were given are using The Sims in a sociology class where the game player chooses the characters careers which then steer their social and future lives.  Another example is using a game called Civ in a Civilization class because it teaches students what is needed for a civilization to survice in terms of agriculture, commerce and government. 

 I think using games could provide a hands-on avenue for kids to make decisions and then see the consequences of their decisions.  I would love to see this whole avenue expanded so that teachers and students could use games for all sorts of situations and topics.  Being a math teacher, I would love to have a game where students had to make calculations to design and then build structures.  It would be great if these structures were then subjected to a whole series of conditions provided through nature and humankind.

 I’d love to know how other educators have used games to effectively teach various skills to students.

The NEA article makes reference to a resource to “test drive games” at WWW.NEA.ORG/REF?GAMING 

I’m not sure if this link will work – I had trouble finding it – maybe someone else will have more luck.  This link may be better:  http://www.nea.org/neatoday/0710/videogameresources.html