Gardner's Theory of Multiple Intelligences and Cooperative Learning.

Hi. Hope you are doing well!
Today's topic is about Gardner's Theory of Multiple Intelligences and Cooperative Learning.
•What are they?
•What are their benefits?

According to Gardner's theory, Multiple Intelligences states that each person has different ways of learning and different intelligences they use in their daily lives. Everybody may have different intelligences, but there is always a more dominant one.
This theory proposes that we are all able to know the world through language, logical-mathematical analysis, spatial representation, musical thinking, the use of the body to solve problems, an understanding of other individuals and an understanding of ourselves.

Students learn in distinctive ways. The teacher may introduce his students to the existence of MI and guide them in making use of their intelligence through different activities.
MI has lots of benefits.
•Each student is seen as individual with his/her own strengths and weaknesses.
•The teacher learns how each student may learn best and give suitable tasks to teach the content.
For example: if a student is good at drawing, he/she may not find himself in subjects such as: maths or biology.
Teachers need to provide areas where this student can show his ability.
•Students may be motivated and confident when using an intelligence they know is one of their strengths.
A teacher may give a task which include different abilities. For example, he/she may give students the task to design a magazine.
In this case, somebody who is good at drawing may design the cover, somebody who is good at using the language may write the articles, somebody who is good at maths may calculate which is the cost they will need and so on.
In this way, the classroom becomes a dynamic place that shows art and contains active learners.
•It encourages self-development and formation.
In using the theory of MI and by adding technology, teachers can allow students to use their strongest intelligence in order to understand and learn best.

Teachers should be very careful about how they are going to meet each student's need and strengths.
Actually, today's teachers do not use this method ( if we can call it so). They are more interested in just explaining the lesson and have students tell it by heart. But, they should be aware of the fact that there are also students who are not good at all subjects, because their intelligence is focused on something else.
The teacher's role is to make sure students develop their strengths and not to force them love something they don't.
It is not easy, but they should be more involved, because they affect students dreams and goals.
One way teacher may do this, is by giving them the opportunity to work on groups.

Cooperative learning takes place when students work together to accomplish shared goals in small groups.

In this kind of learning, everybody has its own responsibility.
Students work together , interact with each-other  and explore the curriculum like never before.
What are some of its benefits?
•Students are actively engaged in the learning process. They are committed  because everybody should achieve its own part and is responsible for the group's success.
•Students enjoy working together. It is proved that students learn better by their peers than by their teacher.
They get to know each-other more and they share knowledge. In this way, they all contribute in their group work.
•It develops thinking skills.
Each student is going to have a different task from the other part of the group and this makes them think more.
•It increases liking for school. Since they are doing something they like, they feel better and they start loving school. By working in groups, they don't feel the pressure of saying the lesson in front of the class and they feel more comfortable while working with their friends.
Researchers have found that teams increase students' self-esteem.
A great example of cooperative learning activity is when teachers use jigsaw, where each students is required to research one section of the material and then teach it to the other members of the group.
Each section is put together at the end, just like jigsaw puzzle.

In the previous semester, we had a very interesting team work.
Our professor, Etleva divided us in 4 groups and each one had its own time.
Each group had its own task.
Team A was the executive team, which had to come up with a warm up activity, an ice-breaker and so on.
Team B was the review team. It had to make an interesting, creative review about was told the previous week.
Team C was the teaching team. It had to make a summary for what was going to be talked and prepared hangouts for different activities.
Team D was the evaluation team, which gave feedback for the other groups.
Initially, I was skeptical, because I thought that we are used to the idea that in a group of  5 people, only 2 really work. But, it was not like that. We were all involved. This helped us to be active and to give our own ideas. It taught us that people with different background knowledge can accomplish the task by offering their own ideas.
This team work  improved our sense of responsibility. Our performance affected the group so we had to do our best in order to get good results. Not only that, but team work helped us to be more organized. We calculated the time everybody had. We divided the topics among each other, so everybody had its own part. We became more hardworking and even innovative, because we tried to come up with new ‘methods’ in order to transmit what we wanted to.
I really liked the idea that there was even an ‘Evaluation Group’. Giving feedback for our classmates developed our critical thinking, because we had to think as a teacher. We had to be objective, not depending on our relationships.

The use of Multimedia helps those methods. Teachers may bring powerpoint presentations to the class, different audios, videos, pictures, since everybody learns in a different way.
Not only that, but while working on different projects, students may also learn how to use different apps that may be very useful to them.

Well, as you can see I highly support cooperative learning.
It may have its own problems, but its benefits are thousands.
MI and cooperative learning are closely connected.
As I said above, in a team work each student has its own part and does what he can do best.
That's why we should encourage the usage of these methods in our schools.
The integration of Multimedia in these methods make them work better.
Including the Project Based Learning, these can be the best methods teachers can use in their classroom.

P.s Feel free to share you comments and suggestions.
Thank you!