In today’s school districts there are many educational software or sites that promise to help enhance student’s performance. The software that our district uses is Study Island. Study Island was implemented in hopes that it would help increase our student’s MEAP scores. After working with the software for an entire school year, our scores did not increase. Chapter 30 helped me realize why this particular software was not successful.
In chapter 30, “Using Rich Media” the authors emphasized the important of using visual and audio and not only text. Study Island was text based software. Students had to read the questions and chose the correct multiple choice answers. If they got 80% of the answers correct they were allowed to select answers using a game like media such as bowling or race cars. This program did not contain any audio narration or visual illustration or animation learning stimulus for students. This explained why struggling reading randomly guessed answers. According to the authors on page 320 “well-designed multimedia training appears to more helpful for low-knowledge learners than for high-knowledge learners”. If districts plan to incorporate a rich media they must first research the media they plan to implement. Just because students are engaged in a computer application, it does not mean that they are actually learning new skills.
Another excellent point referenced in chapter 30 was “learners may need scaffolding in making sense of simulation.” Study Island did not allow scaffolding. The computer randomly assigned my 26 students different areas learning based on their pre-test scores. It was impossible for me to assist the class as a whole because each student was working on a different task. Since the program lacked audio, it would have been great if I could have read each question to provide clarity. This would have been beneficial for my struggling readers.
This chapter proved to one of the most valuable chapters. I plan to share some of the ideas at our professional development meeting. If we are going to incorporate media into our learning curriculum we must conduct the necessary research to ensure that we choose the best media for our student’s. What good is using media if is does not enhance student’s learning and make student’s dread the computer lab.
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Our school system also relies on Study Island to improve student MEAP test scores. I will make sure I no longer put a lot of confidence in it. On the other hand it never hurts to have many practice avenues for standardized tests.
Tamara - that was a great observation. I think that its all too often that school district jump into a process to fix a problem before they have done adequate studies on the the potential fix has worked in the past. I guessing that the lack of success isn't stictly isolated to your school. I too was able to take a lot away from this chapter, and can even identify with my own personal learning style
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