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**This is a reflection I wrote concerning the group project**
Reflection
The first group project we had in our ISTC class had to deal with learning styles and my group had Kinesthetic/Tactile. To be completely truthful, my initial reaction to the project was mild annoyance. I had so much work to do and the last thing I wanted to have to deal with was having a group project. Judging from past experiences, I wasn’t looking forward to a group project. I thought I wouldn’t have time to meet with my group members and I was hoping I wouldn’t have lazy group members that didn’t do their share like I had had in the past. As I started meeting up with my group and we divided the work amongst ourselves, my attitude changed. Luckily, the people who were in my group were organized, responsible individuals who were willing to take on an equal share. We all got our work done and we didn’t even have to meet outside of class. All of the members did their equal share and on the last day, everything came together beautifully. No one was absent and we didn’t have any problems with anyone forgetting to do something. – Perhaps your experience this time was better because you’re working with college students now – people who “want” to be in class to learn and are more mature and responsible for their learning – at least I hope this is the case! I don’t necessarily feel that I’ve strengthened my skills using computer technology as a learning tool, but my previous skills definitely came in handy. I used the internet to research the information that I needed to put together my Braille Alphabet poster. I also used the word processing program on my computer to print out the information I put on my poster. Another useful technological tool that helped my group was email. We never had to meet outside of class because we effectively stayed in touch through email to make sure that we were all doing our part in what needed to be done. Working in a group was a blessing. We all divided the work evenly, so each of us only has to do one fourth of the project. Therefore, none of us had that much to do in the end. Although this helped to cut down on our work load, it took away from our learning experience because we only focused on our part. I didn’t have to do anything on the abacus since I had to do the Braille game. The Braille game was creative and fun. What I learned about the abacus was what was said during the presentation. I had no background information on it before that. But I’m not complaining because ultimately I did have less work to do. This project helped me to learn more about my learning style, which I didn’t know a lot about before. Unfortunately, it isn’t too useful for me considering that most of my classes are lectures. The lectures have too much content in them, which doesn’t allow me time to follow the useful tips for Tactile/Kinesthetic learners such as using highlighters and contrasting colors for important points in my notes. These tips would be helpful thought to help me study, for example, making flash cards. Unfortunately, there are many professors (including me!) who get stuck in the “lecture” mode. However, when you’re trying to learn information for tests and such, you can employ tactile techniques yourself to help you learn and retain that information. I used the example of a former colleague of mine who used colored sticky notes and organized her study notes that way. By copying down information, putting it in an order, and color-coding types of information, you might find that appeals to your tactile learning preference. I might use my knowledge and awareness of other learning styles to help me when I’m in a study group. Since I have a better idea of other people’s learning needs, it could be a useful tool and help me and people who I am studying with better use it to our advantage to retain information. This knowledge also contributes to my skills as a teacher in planning effective lesson plans. I could revolve my lesson plans around the needs of my students’ and have a variety of lessons that compliment the different learning styles. |