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| Literature
Review
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“’Seeing’ Sounds: Echolocation by Blind
Humans” By Christine Uy
This article is basically focused on the problem of echolocation.
What makes this research particularly interesting is the author’s
attempt to extrapolate the experience and knowledge concerning
the world of animals, notably bats on human beings. In fact,
Christine Uy traces the similarities and differences between
the abilities to echolocation bats and blind human possess.
Remarkably she finds out that humans also possess such ability.
To put it more precisely, on analyzing a serious of researches
and developing her own research the author emphasizes that
blind people are able to learn echolocation not simply to
detect objects in their environment but also the dimension
of objects, including their size. At the same time, the researcher
indicates that human ability to define distance is closely
related to the size of an object that makes them different
from bats since the former can perceive distance in isolation
from size of an object while for the latter they are interdependent.
In this article, the author uses statistical information which
actually could be represented the data of researches more
widely in order to support her position. At the same time
graphs and tables are practically absent though they could
contribute to visualization of the comparison between bats
and people and reveal the difference that research demonstrated.
Obviously, this article is quite noteworthy because it refers
to very important problem of echolocation that is traditionally
attributed to the animal world but as the author reveals this
ability may be used to facilitate the life of blind people.
It is a very important point for the further researches aiming
at the improvement of the position of blind people. Furthermore,
this article is quite persuading and interesting to read for
different audiences due to understandable language and vivid
examples and it is not overloaded with statistics to the extent
that some additional information in form of graphs or tables
could make the article even easier for perception.
“Multiple Intelligences Power Up Math Teaching”
by Mark Wahl
The article concerns the problem of teaching math in American
schools. The author identifies an extremely important problem
that often the variety of methods of teaching math does not
really provide students with profound knowledge and this is
the dilemma he attempts to solve in the article. On analyzing
the current situation he arrives to the conclusion that it
is extremely important to develop not only math intelligence
but a variety of intelligences that, according to the author,
could increase the efficiency of learning and make the process
of learning easier and more interesting for students. Basically,
what he suggests is the use of multiple intelligence approach
since it develops different skills and abilities contributing
to the general improvement of students perception of the learning
material.
Obviously, the author uses few statistical information that
is obviously insufficient for a persuading argument though
the article possess sufficient amount of statistics for an
ordinary reader.
Anyway, this article, being quite interesting to read is still
lack persuasiveness, not in the last turn due to the lack
of statistics. In such a situation even examples and practical
recommendations can be hardly positively assessed since for
a critical reader they may be not sufficient enough to support
the author’s point of view.
“Using WebQuests to Teach Content: Comparing Instructional
Strategies” by Janet Strickland
The article represents a profound research of two different
instructional strategies and their impact on students learning
perspectives and perception of the learning material. To put
it more precisely, the author compares WebQuests with traditional
instructions, notably in the experiments students completed
a WebQuest and a poster activity. In fact the author attempts
t o convey to reader all details of his research, methods
he used, the experiments that were held and their results.
Eventually, Janet Strickland reveals that students completing
a traditional poster activity gained higher scores compared
to those completing a WebQuest. Naturally, the author attempts
to find out the reasons for such a difference, practical implications
of the study and even future perspectives of researches in
this field.
This article is sufficiently supported with statistics and
even includes tables that is an obvious advantage of the article
compared to the previous articles. At the same time, statistics
is used where it is essential for better understanding of
all stages of the research.
In general, the article may be characterized as a very interesting
and profound research that reveals to readers all details
of the study by Janet Strickland. It is important that the
author does not simply inform readers but explains the details
of experiments and research, supporting it with essential
statistics, though it is possible to recommend to use more
examples in order to make the article less sophisticated and
easier to perceive. On the other hand, the profoundness of
research is really impressing and what is more it indicates
at the future perspectives of researches dedicated to the
problem the author of the article discusses.
Bibliography:
1. Strickland, Janet. Using WebQuests to Teach Content: Comparing
Instructional Strategies, Retrieved Oct. 18, 2006 from http://www.citejournal.org/vol5/iss2/socialstudies/article1.cfm
2. Uy, Christine. ’Seeing’ Sounds: Echolocation
by Blind Humans, Retrieved Oct. 18, 2006 from http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/~husn/BRAIN/vol1/echo.html
3. Wahl, Mark. Multiple Intelligences Power Up Math Teaching,
Retrieved Oct. 18, 2006 from http://www.resourcefulhomeschooler.com/files/MarkWahlMathArticle.html
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