Complimenting Student Learning
Strengths through Technology

Dusti Howell
Bill Stinson
Emporia State University

Student Learning Strengths
     As new digital tools become more available, it will be necessary for schools to evaluate and assess the usefulness these tools can provide in the learning environment.  This article will identify to teachers and administrators a number of software and hardware options categorized to match up with specific learning styles.  For example, teachers can use visual, auditory and kinesthetic assessments as a means for aligning students with the right technological resources. These tools can be used to help students either study with their learning style strengths or to minimize their learning style weaknesses. Digital tools for screen reading, note-taking, and vocabulary enhancement will be identified in relation to how well they assist visual, auditory, or kinesthetic learners. It is hoped that this will help generate new thoughts and approaches for learners and educators saddled with the challenges of information in the digital world.
The Information Explosion
     New digital tools are emerging daily that are beginning to change how learners deal with an ever increasing amount of information. How fast is knowledge growing? In a recent study, University of California at Berkeley researchers estimated that new stored information grew about 30% a year between 1999 and 2002.  Print, film, magnetic, and optical storage media produced the following amount of new information:

• In 1999 the world produced between 2 and 3 exabytes of new information.
• In 2002 the world produced about 5 exabytes of new information (Lyman & Varian, 2003).How big is five exabytes? (see Table 1). If digitized with full formatting, the seventeen million books in the largest library in the world, the Library of Congress, contain about 136 terabytes of information; five exabytes of information is equivalent in size to the information contained in 37,000 new libraries the size of the Library of Congress book collections (Lyman & Varian, 2003).

     To get a visual grasp of this information explosion, every 2 seconds an item is delivered to the Library of Congress. Since you have begun to read this article, 5 minutes ago, a stack of 150 books has been delivered to the Library of Congress. Also, it’s been stated that “the weekday edition of the New York Times contains more information than the average person was likely to come across in a lifetime in seventeenth-century England” (Wurman, 1989, p. 32).
It should be no surprise then that your future job will depend on you being to be able to use knowledge and information effectively. In fact the skill to use knowledge and information quickly and effectively will grow more important each year. The Information Explosion is here and it doesn’t look like it is going to slow down.
Visual Resources
Search Engines
     Visual search engines categorize and organize information visually. These engines can be extremely useful, particularly when beginning to learn about a new topic. The reason for this is the user can get a very quick idea visually as to how the information is laid out. Visual learners may want to use these search engines to help them become more specific with their search terms before moving on to a more accurate engine like Google to finish a search.

Grokker            (http://www.grokker.com/) Map View
KartOO             (http://www.kartoo.com/)
Webbrain          (http://www.webbrain.com) PC only
Girafa               (http://www.girafa.com/)

Thesaurus
     The Visual Thesaurus (http://www.visualthesaurus.com) has over 145,000 English words visually mapped. After typing a target word into this engine, the screen converts into something like a visual explosion of options that is analogous to a visual spider webs and fireworks. Strands of links shoot out from the target word as other words begin to appear to visually spring from the target word. The closer a word is to the target word, the closer its meaning is to that word. At one time, I felt that my students overused the word “cool” too much in their everyday communications. I challenged them to type “cool” into the visual thesaurus and chose better options. Here is the list of 35 much better ways to say “cool.” Notice that these are broken down into seven different unique meanings, with additional options for each of these that provide even more subtle ways to hone in on more personally more precise meanings. I then challenge students to choose more suitable replacements for most hackneyed words in their vocabulary.

35 Ways to Upgrade ‘Cool’ (via http://www.visualthesaurus.com/online/index.html)

1. Excellent
1. Fabulous
2. Fantabulous
3. First-Class
2. Brilliant
1. Superb
2. Vivid
3. Splendid
4. Glorious
5. Magnificent
6. Impressive
3. Unbelievable
1. Marvelous
2. Implausible
3. Improbable
4. Unlikely
4. Incredible
1. Incredulous
2. Unthinkable
5. Fantastic
1. Phenomenal
2. Tremendous
3. Fantastical
4. Wondrous
5. Extraordinary
6. Miraculous
1. Marvelous
2. Providential
3. Heaven-sent
4. Fortunate
7. Astounding
1. Stupefying
2. Staggering
3. Dumbfounding
4. Astonishing

Visual Readers
     AceReader (http://www.acereader.com) is an award winning software package that has an amazing tool that can help increase your reading speed and retention in a matter of minutes. The advanced-online reader and expert mode allows users to paste large documents and online materials into the tachistoscope device which can blast words at you as fast as you like (from 100 to 2000 words per minute) one word at a time. Change the font style, size color and background color to match your preferences. It is amazing as to how much more you comprehend as it forces you to focus more intently. In fact, software programmers use this software to help them debug code, because the eye blinks less. Subsequently this helps them locate more code problems as opposed to reading from printed copies of the same code.
Auditory Resources
Auditory Readers
     There are a number of ways to listen to books on tape. Audible (http://www.audible.com) is the leader allowing users to listen to books on mp3 players. For those that don’t have the time or the patience to the traditional playback of audio files, try using another tool like Goldwave which can allow you to increase the playback sample rate from 44100 to 66150 or even 88200 hz. By increasing the information rate, you can get through the audio information much more quickly. It takes a bit of practice to get used to listening to the higher pitched voices, like the chipmunks, but it can save you time in the long run (Stevens, 2006).
Record Lectures
     iPod Audio Recorder: By simply attaching a microphone accessory to an iPod, students can record class lectures. Another option is to use a Tablet PC loaded with Microsoft’s OneNote. This program has a feature that allows users to record a lecture at the same time they are taking notes. In fact, the audio feed is linked to the digital notes taken on the special screens with a stylus during the lecture. If a student doesn’t remember what was stated at a certain point in the lecture, they can select the word that they wrote at any point in the lecture and select the playback button to hear what the teacher said at that moment. The downside to this is the fact that the built-in microphone is not very robust and students would need to sit very close to the front to get a decent recording.
Pronunciations
     Merriam-Webster Dictionary (http://m-w.com) provides the leading resource for learning how to pronounce most words. In the case of words that have more than one accepted pronunciation (e.g., piranha), more than one pronunciation is given.
Note-taking with Voice Recognition Software
     Right now I am talking into a microphone, and it is typing the words directly into Microsoft Word as I speak. The latest voice-recognition programs do a fantastic job of converting speech to type. Dragon Naturally Speaking (PC only) is an easy to use speech recognition software. The most recent version does not need training, recognizing the English language, with accuracy near 99%.  Dragon is compatible with most Windows software and allows users to operate their computer with simple voice commands. Macintosh users will want to try ViaVoice, which is  IBM’s speech recognition software. High-quality microphone enabled headsets are recommended for best results.
Kinesthetic Resources
Digital Note-taking
     The Smart Pen by Logitech is a very large pen that converts your words and images into a format that is downloaded to your computer. The pen is a bit large, so at first it may feel like you are writing with a hotdog. However, that is a small price to pay for carrying the equivalent of a digital computer in the palm of your hand (PC only). This pen is made to use on the special digital paper and requires the pen to be returned to its cradle for information to be downloaded to the computer .
http://www.logitech.com/index.cfm/products/productlist/US/EN,crid=1552
Another program is Microsoft’s OneNotewhich is designed to allow users to integrate multiple file formats (audio, video, text, images) into one note taking program.  OneNote is designed to be most effective on a tablet PC. This allows the user to take notes with a stylus right on the screen, just as if it were a piece of paper. Providing the handwriting is fairly neat, the built in optical character recognition software can than translate the handwriting into text. (PC only)   http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/FX010858031033.aspx
Audio Notes
     iPod Audio Recorder: As was mentioned earlier, attaching a microphone accessory to an iPod can allow students to record class lectures. Kinesthetic learners can later review these lectures under more favorable conditions like while standing, walking or pacing in their room.
Virtual Reality
     The Eye Toy by Sony: This program, created for use on PlayStation 2, places the user in the game. Although this is not necessarily educational, it does showcase what may become the future of kinesthetic learning. For example in the future, this type of technology could be used to project the learner into a canoe with Lewis and Clark. 
http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/fun.games/01/20/eyetoy.kinetic/
Conclusion
     Categorizing digital resources to match students individual learning strengths is a technique that can have a significant impact on learners. Exciting new tools continue to be developed that help improve information transfer to the visual, auditory and kinesthetic senses. When students use digital resources that match their own learning styles, there is a greater chance that the student will experience greater productivity from that tool than from other tools that don’t match their styles. Additionally, it is likely that students will enjoy using digital tools that align with their own learning strengths.  
     All resources and links given in the above examples can be found online at http://SolidA.net/eresources/. This site continues to track new tools in seven different categories that may be of interest to educators.
Bibliography
Anshel, J. (2006, September). CVS: Constructing a New Approach to Visual Ergonomics.
       [Electronic version]. Optometric Management. Article71733.
Lyman, P. & Varian, H.R. (2003). How Much Information? 2003: Executive Summary.
       Retreived April 14, 2007, from University of California, Berkeley, School of Information Management & Systems Web site:
       http://www2.sims.berkeley.edu/research/projects/how-much-info-2003/execsum.htm.
Stevens, P. (2006). [Podcast interview with Michael Senoff, host of Hard To Find Seminars]. Paul
Stevens: Improve Your Learning and Study Skills-Part 1. Retrieved January 27, 2006, from iTunes podcast directory.
Wurman, R.S. (1989). Information Anxiety. New York: Doubleday.