Review

Flanagan, J., Post, K. & Smee, R. (1998) Myriad of Minds: Differentiated Classroom Units for Primary School. Lismore: Catholic Education Office.

Superficially Myriad of Minds is a teacher and parent resource of five primary level units of work presented on CD ROM. To take this view and implement the units, as just another classroom resource, would be to miss the progressive educational concepts that underpin the activities and support material. The challenge for the facilitating teacher or parent in implementing these activities in their children's education is to create a total educational environment that encourages and supports enquiry, exploration and communication in providing a differentiated learning experience for their children. In the creation and presentation of this set of units and support material Flanagan, Post and Smee have been guided by Howard Gardner's Theory of Multiple Intelligences, Krathwohl's Affective Taxonomy and Bloom's Cognitive Taxonomy.

The CD contains five educational units on the themes of Creation, Exploration, Gold, Balance and Infinity that are graded as suitable for students working at levels equivalent to school years two to six. However, I feel that many year six students could be challenged by the 'year two' topic of Creation as these units provide the opportunity for the students to develop the concepts to the level of their ability.

Each unit allows the individual to choose a variety of activities that are grouped firstly according to the predominant intelligence area of the activity and then under sub categories of Enquiry Level, Challenge Level and Excellence Level, providing a guide to the depth of enquiry necessary for the activity. Also included for each set of activities is a 'Just For Fun' section for further enrichment and extension.

Students are expected to complete six activities for each unit with no more than three activities from any one intelligence area. The activities selected by the student are marked by clicking in a check box and then can be printed as a personalised guide to planning and progression of work. When all the selected activities of a unit have been completed the student has the opportunity to participate in follow-up questions provided to encourage metacognition of the concepts learnt.

A comprehensive teachers' reference section provides background information on the teaching and learning concepts that guided the creators of the units, and the educational philosophy and learning environment that can be implemented to guide the learning facilitator and student to get the most out of these units. Syllabus outcomes for each unit are provided to assist the educator with curriculum planning, assessment and reporting. A printable multiple intelligences questionnaire is provided for use by students to identify their preferred intelligence area and to guide their selection of activities with recommendation that students select a maximum of three activities from any one intelligence area.

This is a PC-centric CD for computers using Windows 3.1, 95 or 98. The loading instructions are concise and stipulate that all applications other than the program manager are closed during installation. On my machine Microsoft Office icons sit on the desktop at startup and the installation process would not proceed until these had been closed.

Navigation is as intuitive or obvious as possible using 'Next' and 'Back' buttons to move through the pages, and icon and text main menu and activity menus. Loading of the Main menu and Unit menu pages was very slow on my computer and required patience when moving backwards and forwards to view and select activities from intelligence area lists. On some pages the background colour or pattern interferes with the readability of the content especially the 'Teacher Resource' material. This is disappointing because I feel that this information is important for providing a learning environment that encourages engagement with these activities and for understanding the cognitive and affective theory that underpins these units. Possibly a good method of gauging the suitability of backgrounds would be to ask 'Would I read a book that was printed on this colour or pattern paper?'

The introduction to the units, support information and teacher resources combine to make Myriad of Minds a valuable educational resource. I feel the CD is particularly suitable for teachers who wish to challenge and enrich their students' education, for home-schooling parents to assist in providing a differentiated learning experience or for parents who feel that their children need more challenging and differentiated work than they are getting at school.

Myriad of Minds costs $45 plus $5 postage and is available from:

Catholic Education Office, PO Box 158, Lismore 2480 NSW

Phone: (02) 6622 0422; Fax: (02) 6622 0990

Howard Smith
UNE, Armidale  

©TalentEd is located at the School of Education, University of New England, Armidale, Australia.

This page updated: 23 January 2006 Webmaker: Howard Smith. hsmith4@une.edu.au