It's all been a LIE!

What to expect:

6 min read

This week, we dive into helping our kinesthetic learners - while also being reminded that the VAK (visual - auditory - kinesthetic) model doesn’t mean what you think it does. Here’s what you can expect:

• Tech Talk: Escape-rooms are cool again.

• Surplus Scoop: Will that fourth cup of coffee hurt?

• Brainy Bits: Throw it all out the window - learning preferences don’t matter!

Tech Talk

Getting students to move in a digital environment

Over the past few weeks, we’ve tackled visual and auditory edtech. This week, we tackle the last piece of the VAK puzzle - kinesthetic. Although statistically a small amount of students, with the VAK theory, students are not in silos. They have preferences across all three types that will change with every subject and lesson.

Kinesthetic often gets mislabeled as just ‘movement’. Instead, it incorporates experience as opposed to passive viewing/listening. But in our increasingly digital world, how can teachers incorporate some kinesthetic elements?

Enter this week’s edtech focus - BreakoutEDU. If you’ve ever done an escape-room, this one will feel right at home. For those that haven’t, you’re locked in a room and have to solve a series of problems to get out, all centered around a storyline. They’re actually a lot of fun!

This experience is also kinesthetic learning at its finest. The combination of movement, brain puzzles, critical thinking, and teamwork are what BreakoutEDU aims to create - but in a virtual environment. BreakoutEDU is a suite of curriculum-based experiences. There is a whole library of escape-room style games to pick from for your lessons.

How does it work? As a teacher, you set up your selection of ‘games’ and give students your unique class code to access your personalized site. Students hit ‘Play’ and start completing different ‘locks’ (i.e. levels) in their story. In each lock, students answer curriculum-related brain teasers and virtual activities.

But what about movement? With their upgraded plan, a majority of their games become physical with the addition of their mailed in-person ‘kit’. This set of lockboxes, locks, custom cards, UV lights, and a host of other goodies help bring your escape-room lessons to life.

Why do we like this option? Simply because it makes things tangible! Kinesthetic learning is not just about running around. It’s instead about making additional neural connections by associating movement with new thoughts. The action of fiddling with these locks while collaborating in groups to solve critical thinking puzzles makes for a potent learning combo.

Is it a perfect solution? Absolutely not - our biggest gripe here is the expensive price. At $100 USD/year or $199 USD/year for the physical kit upgrade, it can be hard to justify the full system. Our suggestion? Start with the basic, virtual-only version, and instead of upgrading for a physical kit, head to your local craft or dollar store to purchase some locks, boxes, and anything else you think will enhance the experience. 

Escape-rooms are an excellent critical thinking and team building exercise. Even without BreakoutEDU, we encourage all teachers to try opening up your class to this new kinesthetic element that combines multiple modes of learning and critical thinking elements.

Surplus Scoop

Here’s our weekly roundup of interesting education stories from around the world. Click each link to learn more:

• Now THIS is what outdoor learning should look like!

• Science has finally spoken - is the amount of coffee a teacher drinks dangerous?

• Yikes! This school-sponsored AI chatbot just misused a bunch of student data.

Brainy Bits

Wait, it’s been a myth this WHOLE TIME?!

That’s right - it’s all fake. Well, kind of. The myth of students having only one dominant form of learning has, according to this week’s research focus, very little evidence behind it, causing more harm than good.

The danger, according to this week’s paper by Sun et al. (2023), is that by putting a label on different learning styles, parents, teachers, and even students may think differently about their potential. In other words, do the three VAK categories of visual, auditory, and kinesthetic come with harmful presumptions?

To find out, researchers ran three experiments with elementary students, parents, and teachers, and then compared the data. Each experiment played out as follows:

Experiment 1:

• Students and parents were introduced to two other students that were described as either a visual or a hands-on learner.

• The test student/parent was then asked to rate these students’ intelligence and athleticism.

Experiment 2:

• Parents and teachers were asked to rank the same ‘visual’ and ‘hands-on’ learners, furthering their comparison.

Experiment 3:

• Parents and teachers then had to predict the grades, subject by subject, for the same ‘visual’ and ‘hands-on’ learners.

The results? In Experiment 1, both parents and students agreed that the hands-on learner must be athletic and the visual learner must be academic.

For Experiment 2, a majority of parents ranked the visual learner as the smarter student. Over 75% of teachers agreed on this, while 95% of teachers agreed that the hands-on learner must be the better athlete.

For Experiment 3, with both teachers and parents, visual learners were predicted to academically score better in core courses, whereas non-core courses belonged to the hands-on learners. 

All three of these results show that teachers, parents, and even students themselves all make assumptions at an alarming rate. And let’s be honest here - we’ve been going through the VAK model this past month at The PEN Weekly - but we’ve always stated the same: 

NO learner is only ONE type!

These ‘preferences’ show us how students like to learn; they are not an indicator of success. Why care about this then? Because when a student likes the modality, they become more engaged, and this is the key metric to follow.

Hopefully our last few issues have given you some strategies for all types of learners, but we also hope we’ve driven home the point that all students, regardless of preference, can benefit from them. What’s been your favorite so far? Hit reply and let us know!

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References

This week’s issue adapts information from the following sources:

Tech Talk:

Breakout Media (2024). Unlock the love of learning! Retrieved from https://breakoutedu.com/ 

Brainy Bits:

Sun, X., Norton, O. & Nancekivell, S.E. Beware the myth: learning styles affect parents’, children’s, and teachers’ thinking about children’s academic potential. npj Sci. Learn. 8, 46 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41539-023-00190-x