What makes the iPad brilliant is that it caters to all different intelligences. In fact most apps touch upon all different types of intelligences. I’ve tried to match all of my favorite educational apps with their corresponding intelligences. For those apps that matched with more than one, I’ve used equivalents. For example, Showme and Educreations are interactive whiteboard apps that have got the same functions and both fit in the Visual and Aural box. Just like I don’t believe all students fit only in one intelligence box either. All skills need to be developed and the iPad especially makes it do easy to jump from one to the other and more importantly incorporate the different intelligences.
Students can use whichever app they chose to study. For example they can make a mindmap with Popplet, record notes with Dragon Dictation, make flashcards with MiniTeach, Skype with an expert, touch the equations with Algebra Touch. Each student will naturally develop their own study style and use it to it’s full potential.
Take the brilliant app “The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore” a beautiful read (intrapersonal + linguistic) with gorgeous graphics (visual), read aloud (aural) and readers influence story by tapping on objects (bodily-kinaethetic). So this one app alone already touches upon 5 out of 9 intelligences.
The debate whether Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences really excist or not has been contested quite a few times. I personally don’t believe that students really have just on or two type of intelligences. The point of categorizing these apps is that the students or teacher can easily work out which type of app optimally serves their purpose of learning the concerned content. As cognitive scientist Daniel T. Willingham wrote:
Children do differ in their abilities with different modalities, but teaching the child in his best modality doesn‘t affect his educational achievement. What does matter is whether the child is taught in the content‘s best modality.
So much like the ideas behind TPACK, consider which type of intelligence best serves the content and not just the student. For example, a student might do a multiple intelligences test and decide he is a visual learner. However, the best way to study the English irregular verbs is still to rhythmically repeat them one after the other thousands of times to make them stick in your brains. So don’t base your pedagogy on a tests and go and give this student a whole list of irregular verbs to passively read or draw pictures of.
Click on the app icons to see the app in the App Store.
Hi Suzanne,
It is great to see that we are now able to use more senses to create better and deeper learning experiences. I really like the overview of all the apps.
Thanks!
Thanks for the background information, and for the graphic which shows particular apps. I’m not sure how to access the apps you recommend though. I recognize the icons for some apps in your graphic, but many of them I don’t. When I click on any of the icons I’m not taken to that app in iTunes, but to a copy of the same overview graphic in a blog post. Could you just clarify how to find all the apps shown in the chart?
Thanks!
David
What kind of device are you reading it from? If you let the page load, little round circles should show up. They are links to the apps in the App Store.
Thanks – my mistake, I am using Firefox with NoScript, which was blocking the links. Thanks again for the ideas!
Thanks a lot to share your point of view and the Apps. I’m teacher in a junior high school in France and we build projects with Multiple Intelligences, so to share informations I do curation about Multiple Intelligences:
http://www.scoop.it/t/intelligences-multiples
I work too about mind mapping and concept mapping in classroom. On my blog I share the works of my pupils, and colleagues that I trained and I do curation too about mind mapping and concept mapping in education:
http://classemapping.blogspot.fr/
http://www.scoop.it/t/classemapping
Thanks again for your post
Best regards
Lucas Gruez
I love this post! I am looking for a multiple intelligences quiz on the iPad, like the ones you can find online, to help students determine *which* is their learning style. Have you seen such a thing?
Hi Caroline
Thanks a lot.
I had this link. But I don’t know the app,personnaly I’m more Android.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/knowledge-steps/id552754940?mt=8
The app look’s like interesting.
Best
Lucas