Activity 4.4: Dispelling Three Myths About How Learners Process Information

The Kirschner and van Marrienboer article debunks three educational urban myths; one, learners as digital natives, learners as having distinct learning styles, and learners as self-educators on the internet. 

To begin, the first myth talks about this idea of a new generation of children who are able to do many things at one time due to technological fluency.  However, the authors express the range of resources these students use is small, and this generation does not actually have a good idea of what technology can actually do for them.  In debunking this myth, the authors bring up two things I found interesting: the butterfly defect, which says that children just flutter around and pick things at random (without a plan or value); and the inability for humans to multi-task.  I always thought I was a good multi-tasker, until I read this part of the article and realized that what I actually do is switch fluently between activities.  This also reminds me of the texting and driving issue: people say that they can do both, but really, they can’t focus their attention on two things at once, which is what makes texting and driving that much more dangerous.

Myth two talks about learning styles, and how it is thought that instruction targeting individual learning styles is the best way to introduce concepts in education.  However, as the authors say, there are a lot of issues with learning styles, for instance the way they are assessed- via self-report, which may not be the most accurate way to report learning styles.  Learning styles also put students in groups, and may not always generalize to all subjects, for as the authors say, the preferred learning style for someone may not be the most effective one.  Instead, the authors suggest, “it is probably more fruitful to focus on the fundamental things that learners have in common… than on the myriad of styles in which they may be different from each other” (p. 175).

Myth three specifies learners as self-educators, using the Internet as their main resource, giving there no reason to teach and acquire knowledge.  This myth talks about   If this myth is true, how are teachers supposed to guide students?  What role will they take, if not to teach information?  

Reading this article, especially when it talked about the role of technology and learning for students today, reminded me of two connections, one within my experience and one outside my experience.  The high school in my district recently received a grant in which every student got an iPad to use for school.  This has resulted in almost all instruction being online via a program called Edmodo (which I believe is something like BlackBoard).  The assumption that students can be self-educators is clear at this school, and it seems to me that it probably is not a good assumption.  The talk about technology reminded me also of a conversation I overheard at the Kentucky Association for Psychology in the Schools (KAPS) conference last week about.  Two people were talking about the update of the Weschler Intelligence Scales for Children (it will be the 5^th edition) and how it is all computerized; the materials needed are two iPads, and one set of blocks.  I think the developers of the WISC may be playing into that first myth; what do you think?