“Learn the power of the Dark Side, Anakin.” – Supreme Chancellor Palpatine, Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith
There is a large contingent of people who believe in the supreme power of books, and I admit to having once been one of them. I learn best from books, from black words on crisp, white pages. A quiet, sponge-like absorbency comes over my mind when I open the pages of a book. I can, in a way, actually feel my brain getting ready to capture things when I grab a new book. Books calm me; too much multi-media makes me feel a little wired – like I’ve drunk a pot of coffee. Yes, I like multi-media well enough – TV programs, podcasts, online videos, etc. – but I learn best from books. While I can retain the images and the overall message of a program on The History Channel, I remember details best when my eyes have a chance to capture the words in print. I know lots of people like this. We’re the ones clamoring for name tags at social gatherings, because we have to see a name to remember it. Just tell me your name, and it’s gone before your second sentence has hit the air. Until the last couple of years, books equaled learning and multi-media equaled entertainment. Families that went around using ’secondary materials’ in place of books were obviously getting sucked into the educational Dark Side.
Padawan Learner, however, isn’t like me. He likes to read and is a good reader, but to really tie something to his brain he does best by listening and watching things. He’s an audio-visual guy, which is turning out to be a great fit for him with the Thinkwell Pre-Algebra lectures online. He’s doing less practice problems than he ever has with any previous math program, but he’s retaining the material like I’ve never seen before. I wonder if my brother would have continued to love math like he did as a little kid, if he’d had a more interactive or visual way of learning about these abstract concepts after he hit high school. PW was watching the lecture this morning and popping out answers to the example problems without even putting pencil to paper. He owned his knowledge and could put it to immediate use.
Dark Side or not, I’m waking up to the power that audio-visual materials – even as primary materials – can hold.
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