Self-Reflection of my own learning styles.

Now that I have a deeper understanding of learning theories and styles it really hasn’t changed much on how I learn, but more so on how I teach. I think that as a teacher it’s really easy if you’ve been doing it for a long time to forget the diversity of the class. I found myself reading the material and seeing the faces of students I’ve had in the past pop into my head and thinking to myself “man I could have possibly done this or that differently”. I found myself rewriting some of my curricula after reading the material.

Over the past few weeks, the various learning theories and learning styles explain a few things about my learning preferences. Rather I should say solidify what I pretty much knew. I’m a visual learner and a cognitive/connectivist learner with subjects that I like and more of a behaviorist learner with subjects that I don’t in addition to being an obvious adult learner. I prefer videos and charts over extensive reading. Of course, extensive is relative but I do absorb a lot more from seeing and hearing at a much faster rate. No doubt because most of my technical training for the last couple of decades has been that way, plus being an artist, I’ve always been a visual learner.

I use technology constantly in my learning. Right now I’m typing this up on my laptop with 2 additional screens connected to it. I use video tutorials, I search using google constantly, I create word documents and copy and paste information from the internet, pdfs, and anything else related to what I’m doing so I can find it later or refer to it. I also record information so I can view it for practice later either on my camera, phone or tablet. The funny part is that I still write down tons of notes in a couple of sketchbooks because writing down something I read (a definition, diagram, word or terminology I didn’t know, etc.) helps me remember and have quicker reference to information. Even with all of the technology, there is still something far more intimate about physically writing something out rather than typing it.