Learning Styles

My learning experiences in China and America are very different. In China, the teaching strategies mostly are "read more, think more, create less, and practice on paper quizzes mostly, none research." But here in US, I experience a totally new learning experience and teaching strategies, here advocate "shared reading and guided reading aloud, think to find a resolve method independently, group discuss aloud, mutual benefit, multi-level research, visual present technologically, personalized creative demonstration, and open-mineded thinking or open-ended discussion". I like American style of teaching strategies, to "empower students" let students think and create during the learning process. The most important thing is about the "open-ended thinking and discussion", which means there is no an absolutely correct and final answer to a question, there are always space for your thinking and action research. I love this teaching strategies alot. For most students who are not good at taking exams or rotating memory, this is the most effective way of learning.

Although I love American learning experiences and most of teaching strategies here, I feel less effective about group discussion and group presentation. I know groupwork is a mainstream teaching method now in American colleges and universitties. But this strategy also has some disavantages, because some people who are more good at profound thinking, comprehensive and large amount of reading, and action research could not get enough information from short group discussion and hasty group presentation, especailly if in that group there are some people who don't do enough research work , instead very good at grabbing information patches hastily , then the discussion is definitely a waste of time and energy, since you cannot learn real things from their ideas which are without enough professional theory support.  Maybe for those who feel satisfied with easy work , and just want to complete homework or job easily , this is a really effective way of learning. But for those who like to do deep research and summarize personal thinking sysmetically and academically, then this kind of work will only do a limited favor to them, meanwhile also waste energy and time.

Because we cannot teach each lesson focusing on every learning style that we have in the classroom, the thing we should focus instead depends on the "Learning Targets" we want the students to arrive at.  I use Bloom's Taxonomy to guide my teaching, teaching periods can be divided into "knowledge,  comprehension, application, analysis, evaluation and synthesis". In each different periods, we will make a "Learning Target" or several different "Learning Targets" for students. Depending on the learning targets, we could choose different teaching strategies which are fit with those specific targets. Such as in the period of "analysis", the most proper teaching strategies will include: analyze, catalog, categorize, chart, deduce, distinguish, survey, differentiate or chart, etc..

Creative Commons Lab

This is my "Creative Commons" that I will use in my curriculum. In this picture, the two Chinese symbols mean "China".
The color is a golden brown which represents a feeling of long and old histroy. So, I will use this CC to introduce Chinese history
or culture background for each unit. And also will use this image to remind students when we need to go through the lesson or unit to
review for quizzes or tests.

Here below is the link to my flicker, I upload my CC to my flicker. Please click the link below.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/68064105@N03/sets/72157628061396094/