Kinesthetic Learning - Get the kids up and doing things to learn
Leigh Ann Sudol blogging at the CSTA blog reminded me about a topic I have been meaning to blog about for a while. Kinesthetic Learning. What is Kinesthetic Learning? A good definition (borrowed from this web site) is: "A Kinesthetic Learning Activity (KLA) is any activity that physically engages students in the learning process." Andy Begel who is a researcher at Microsoft Research is one of the key contributors in this area. Andy gave a presentation at the CS & IT symposium this past July and has also presented at SIGCSE - the Special Interest Group in Computer Science Education symposium.
I spent an hour or so talking to Andy about computer science education on a visit to Microsoft Research last week. He's a very smart person who is very excited about the area of Kinesthetic Learning Activities. Frankly I was skeptical for a while but participating in a couple of workshops over the summer have turned me around.
So much of what we do in the classroom is static. We put a pundit on a platform and have him pontificate. Students strain to suck it all in as they struggle against sleep. There has to be a better way. Getting students moving about and acting out the concepts we are trying to teach seems like a great idea.
There is a whole collection of these activities at the KLA site. I particularly like the Human Binary Tree activity. One variation I would like to try sometime is to explain how a tree works and then have the class place themselves in a tree using their birthday as the "key." Once the tree was set up you could easily (I think) use traversal of the tree to place everyone in a line in order. I really think this would be an interesting and meaningful exercise for students. And it would be a whole lot more fun than moving pointers around on a white board. That much I am sure of.
Another site that uses similar principles is the Computer Science Unplugged program. Besides a fun exercise with binary numbers I really enjoyed the "magic card trick" for teaching check digits for error detection and correction. These are some important concepts that can be presented in a way that makes them easy to understand. And frankly I think some kids need to get up and moving around to keep the blood flowing to the brain. So check these programs out. let me know what you think, and let me know if you find other sources of Kinesthetic learning Activities.
