Synthesis about Multimedia and Interactive Learning

1. Edilson Araujo
910068034
Synthesis about
Multimedia and
Interactive Learning

2. Edilson Araujo
910068034
 At the begging of class the scores I got for the learning
preferences test was Active-9, Sensing-1, Visual-7, and
Sequential-5. I found all of them to be accurate as I indeed
prefer active, visual, and sequential learning. I tend to learning
by doing, and am more like to learn by seeing somebody doing it
first and then showing me the steps in a sensing manner. My
thinking hasn’t really changed about my learning styles as I still
prefer the same ones that the test said I preferred but now I can
at least adjust my study habits to pass a class that doesn't fit
into my learning preferences well. The only thing that changed
in my thinking is that I am trying to make more of an effort to
balance out my learning preferences. For example my score for
active versus reflective was active-9. I am now trying to make
that a more balanced learning style. As of right now knowing my
learning style has helped me to adjust to certain classes and
even feel better when I didn't retain certain material. It's good to
know what you prefer in a class room.

3. Edilson Araujo
910068034
 At the begging of class the pathway I selected was the one of a
learning sage. I wanted to be a more effective learner by gaining
a broader understand of how multimedia technologies could help
my education. I feel I have learned a lot about all sort of
multimedia resources and that my learning is definitely
improving as a result of this. I did not change my pathway during
the course of this class. I stuck to the my original goals because
I really wanted to learn about how podcasts, and iTunesU
worked as well as what other resources were out there besides
the two I just mentioned.

4. Edilson Araujo
910068034
 The activity where we got to build a human body was the most
interesting of them all because it used both the active pieces
where you placed the human parts in the skeleton and then it
showed you a quick write up about that body part and how it
works and is connected to the whole body which caters to my
sequential learning preference. This same activity helped me to
get a deeper understanding of how to use multimedia to learn
because it showed me that multimedia is meant to teach you by
presenting you with the information in various ways so that
whoever you are and whatever your learning preferences are
you can still get the information. As far as learning with others I
think that the activity that thought me the most was the hip
replacement one as that game could be played with other
students at the same time. I feel like almost any game can be a
good tool to learn with others because you can make it a team
work or a competition and it all works so that you are learning
together.

5. Edilson Araujo
910068034
 Podcasts and online lectures from iTunesU were the top
multimedia technology I used for this class. They were great to
fulfill my learning preferences of being a visual and active
learner. I started off by downloading a series of lectures from UC
Berkley that matched up my own class pretty well. I liked the
way the professor from Berkley explained the material better so I
would watch his lecture before going to class and it made a giant
difference. My professor prefers the global approach but I'm
more of a sequential learner and tend to only learn when I can
see the linear connections. I would then watch the lectures from
the podcasts, and do the problems in them following along and
taking notes in order to study.

6. Edilson Araujo
910068034
 Screencasts were also super helpful as they were very similar to
the podcasts with the exception that they were shorter and
therefore easier to watch over and over in order to understand
and or review. Most of the screencasts I watched were from
Khan Academy because they are really good at accommodating
to my intuitive learning preference. The person who was
teaching in the videos always made sure to explain the material
in ways that were almost common everyday ways so that the
material would become intuitive and less complicated. When
they used examples they didn’t just use variables or weird
examples that made no sense in real life, everything that they
did in the example were things that you could turn around and
think about your own everyday life to see.

7. Edilson Araujo
910068034
 The third tools I used to help my learning in this class was the
Games MMOG's. Some games were better than others in the
fun factor and in the accuracy level. I liked the lemonade stand
one where you had to sell lemonade and you had a budget to do
so. I feel that that game could be a good intro to economics and
how running a business really feels like. I accommodated for my
active learning preference. It would be fine to sit there and read
about how a business works and how you need to manage
budgets and supplies' costs and everything else that goes into it
but that game did all of that and made it fun. It was much harder
to forget the game than stuff I would read in my textbook and so
it was a great success in teaching econ concepts.

8. Edilson Araujo
910068034
 The multimedia technology that worked best for me was the
iPad and the Khan Academy apps. I downloaded screencasts
from Khan Academy and lectures explaining the material and
that was great help to me in my physics class. The material in
this class is not that easy and seeing it once in class was not
enough for me to fully learn. I am an active visual leaner and
reading the book was not only hard but I also have trouble
understanding the material that way since the pictures in the
examples are not that good and my imagination kind of
sucks, but seeing somebody explain the subject over and over
brought much better results than having me just sitting there and
reading the book would've brought.

9. Edilson Araujo
910068034
 None of the social technologies really worked for me. I found
that I would quickly lose focus on the social technology sites and
would end up not doing much work. In order to stay focused and
get things done I need an environment free of distractions and
that is what I was not getting with the social technologies. On
top of that I found that the information on those sites was kind of
all over the place and not in a real organized fashion. That made
it even harder for me to follow along as I am a sequential learner
and much prefer a linear way of think which I was not getting in
the social technology sites.

10. Edilson Araujo
910068034
 The multimedia learning strategy that I will continue to use is the
interactive multimedia learning tools. I found it very useful to be
able to interact with the subject being explained and that would
be really useful when leaning a new job. You can have
simulations of tasks where you get to try things out and see how
they fit and work out. You can learn by trial and error without
messing anything up in real life.

11. Edilson Araujo
910068034
 The multimedia technology that I plan on continuing to use for
learning after this class is the multimedia games because most
of the games that were introduced to us actually made learning
the subject matter fun and a lot less boring. This technology
could not only be used for learning but also just for fun. The
games were free to play and not complicated at all which was a
bonus as not all games are free. The technology that I will try to
avoid using will be the social multimedia technologies as I find
them to be distracting and they can often keep from learning
which is the opposite result of what I'm looking for. In order to
learn on my own I need less distractions and a less social
environment as my social side will just take over and I will get
nothing done other than socializing and making new friends.