Week 4 R/D 6

Before reading this chapter I didn’t even know the title “Human Performance Improvement.” If I had I would have assumed it involved merely teaching tasks in more effective ways. There were several ideas brought up in this chapter which I could apply to both my professional work and to my students.

The authors point out early in the chapter that when performance is not as good as expected, many instructional designers assume the cause is poor instruction when it could be several other causes. It is up to the instructional designer to fully analyse the problem from every angle to determine the correct cause of poor performance. This applies well to my professional work. When test scores are low, I have a tendency to jump to the conclusion that my lesson was bad. I can use this chapter to broaden my mind to at minimum entertain the possibility that other factors might be at play. I like the author’s reference several times in this chapter to a possible cause of inadequate performance being be a lack of timely and useful feedback. I can relate to the fact that this could be a factor affecting performance because I see this as a determent to my performance in the majority of online courses I have taken to date. An example of this would be the courses I have taken where the only feedback I receive from my instructor to my writings is a single numerical score. I personally find this lack of timely and useful feedback de-motivating.

I was a bit taken aback by the principles the authors quoted which he attributed to a study done by Gilbert in 1996 (page 137) . All four cited theorems were at first glance surprising but the one that I highlighted is the one that states that “ A system that rewards people for their behavior (e.g. hard work, knowledge, motivation) without accounting for accomplishment encourages incompetence.” The more I think about this the greater it becomes. As a teacher or a boss, I have to remember that I need to encourage a student’s hard work, knowledge and motivation but I need to keep asking the question “what did you accomplish?” To think that we are actually encouraging incompetence by rewarding hard work and motivation that accomplishes little, motivates me. The one thing I want to do the most is discourage incompetence!

Week 4 R/D5

The Internet and the Web have had and will continue to have an impact on all educational levels. As the question “1a” from the text implies, the impact will be different at each of them. The questions asks me to reflect “based on what you know…indicate whether you think the Internet and Web will have …” Here’s what I think:

At grade levels K-12 the Internet will have a smaller impact that in higher education. Young people, I’m including 8-18 yr olds in this, cannot handle much of the self directed nature of internet instruction. Web based activities will continue to play a supporting role but Thomas Edison’s proclamation that books will be obsolete in schools will continue to go unfulfilled. I think that what the author describes on page 24 of our text will continue to hold true in K-12:

“As a new medium enters the educational scene, there is a great deal of initial interest and much enthusiasm about the effects it is likely to have on instructional practices, However, enthusiasm and interest eventually fade, and examination reveals that the medium has had a minimal impact on such practices.”

On the other hand, higher education and adult education will continue to radically be changed and ultimately overtaken by web based instruction. Adults are more mature and motivated to learn whether in class or on their own. Many lecture type college classes can be better delivered on the web through the use of interactive media. Pressure on “traditional” schools to offer more online courses will continue to build due to competition from accredited “virtual universities.” As more studies are done and pedagogies improve, online will continue to improve and change what we think about higher education. As internet connection speed and bandwidth continues to increase, more innovative and rich methods for education delivery will come about.

Week 4 Extra: Screen Recorded Presentation

This is sort of like a podcast except it is a screen recorded lesson. I did this lesson for another class but I never attempted to embed it into a blog before.

The program I used to record with is Camtasia and I was using the free trial. I didn't get really good resolution with this but I suspect if I played with it enough I'm sure I could get better results. Much of the zooming in was done automatically by Camtasia but I did end up adjusting some of the zooming which was not difficult to do. Of course I added all the little notes you see pop in and out. This is an awesome way to demonstrate computer skills and the students I used this with seemed to learn the material. They liked the informal voice and feel of it.

Week 4 Map

"Street View" from GoogleMaps is really cool. If you haven't checked it out yet, click the "street view" button and then double click any street that has a blue line in it. Drag your mouse around the window that opens and look around. To find out more check out http://maps.google.com/help/maps/streetview/index.html

No I'm not fixated on San Francisco, it just happens to have great "Street View" coverage. FYI, so does Anchorage Alaska. Oh yeah, here's the map.

View Larger Map

Week 4 Static Image Post

Yes this is me. This picture happens to have been taken at the end of the second week of class after I had missed a flight out of Reno NV with group of students and had to rent a car and drive to San Francisco. I had to put the finishing touches on my post for the week in the airport and pay $10 for internet access in order to post on time.

Anyway, as long as we had to go to 'Frisco, we thought we might as well see some sights.

Week 4 Video Post

Here's a little video about summers at my place.
The cast is exclusively my family.

Week 3 R/D4

Some of what I teach is simply recognizing a computer part or component. Students are required to be able name the component by sight, tell what it does and discuss its specifications.

One way I could incorporate photo sharing into my curriculum is to have student make computer component tests that their classmates would take. How I could do this is first have students acquire photos of various computer components and organize them on a photo sharing site. Each student could create, as appropriate, groups of pictures and create sort of a visual test by numbering the pictures and creating a worksheet for their classmates to fill out. Students could give the blank, numbered worksheets to their classmates and have them fill in the blanks with the appropriate name of the part pictured. For example, when we are learning memory, students could create a memory group and populate the group with pictures of various types of memory as well as the various types of slots the memory goes into. Other students would have to identify the memory stick or the slot and write the name on the worksheet. This process would be facilitated by having all the students become members of each others photo sharing network.

The benefit using this service is that students would be able to see lots of different types, of parts which have the same name. The process of actually creating the test would be great reinforcement for the students and make them really notice the sometimes subtle differences between components.

My concerns about allowing students to play with these services are:

• Students viewing school inappropriate pictures.


• Getting side-tracked looking at off-subject pictures.


• Students posting pictures of themselves which parents might not approve of.

I see many similarities between the ADDIE model and what I do when I teach. A main difference being that my following the ADDIE model is not really as formal as described int eh text. I appreciate the authors mentioning that this is not necessarily a linear process as textbooks would have you believe. My lessons always have measurable objectives (Design). Need assessment (Analysis) usually takes place automatically because what is needed is usually evident from observing students in the classroom. “Development” and “Implementation” are other parts of ADDIE that always happen though they are usually not labeled as such while they are happening. Like most teaching professionals, I create a lesson and then gather the materials needed for it. I practice it a bit and then give it (implement it) to the class. For me the most important part is the “Evaluation.” Sometimes when a lesson I worked hard on flops its hard to step back, evaluate it, and if necessary throw out big chunks of it and retool. When a lesson works well, it’s important to evaluate what made the lesson a positive experience and try incorporating those aspects into other lessons.

Week 3 R/D3

I have been using social bookmarking in my classroom for several months now. The way in which I use it mainly me sharing with my students to keep them focused. I think Postman would be proud because this is an example of a problem I had that I was able to solve with technology.

I teach within the ever-changing world of technology at a career and technical center. An activity I do with my students weekly is “Tech Current Events” where students find a story on the internet about some new technology and write about it. On Friday we get together in a group and each student shares what they have found. The discussions are great and we all learn much. The problem I had was that students were taking way too much time finding a tech current event and often had to do a rush job on the written work to get it done on time. The writing is one of the my main interests as I am trying to bring more English Language Arts content into my curriculum. The reason the students took so long was that they were either indecisive, wanting to find that perfect story, or they simply got side tracked the way we all do when we are on the internet. What I ended up doing to solve this problem is subscribing to a few good technology news RSS feeds. Now during the week when I see an interesting headline I post it to my Delicious site under an “IT” tag. When I give class to prepare for Tech Current Events, I instruct the students that they can use any story they want as long as it is on my Delicious site and no other student has already called it. It cut the prep time in half!

One other use for social bookmarking I can see is for documenting research. It would be very easy to check sources if students tagged all their sources on a bookmarking site and the teacher had all students in his social bookmarking network. Two clicks and a teacher could tell if the student really read the stuff he or she is reporting about.

I liked the way Chapter 1 in Trends & Issues started the discussion at square one and discussed in depth the concept of what we are studying: Instructional Design and Technology. I must say that my views have been shaped somewhat by Postman in that I read this chapter with his questions in mind (to paraphrase); “what problem is there that technology can fix?” Reisner and Dempsey seem to be pointing out that one problem that can be fixed is simply education can be better. At the heart of both of the definitions of Educational Technology that the authors site (one of which they wrote) is “improving learning and performance.” I can get behind this definition but I think perhaps there’s more. I certainly thought that Ed Tech would help me bring skills to the classroom that would enhance learning but I also thought, and still think, that this study will help me make more learning happen during the same amount of time. I’m not necessarily talking about teaching the same subject better, I’m talking about the possibility of teachers layering subjects on top of a class already taught. For example, could I design a way to teach my more tech savvy students programming when they get ahead in their networking studies? Could a Civics class teach criminal law to accelerated students at the same time? Can a US history class have an American Litrature layer that is formalized, well designed, facilitated by a highly qualified teacher and mapped to applicable state standards? The brightest students crave challenge. This part of Instructional Design and Technology is perhaps alluded to but missing in the authors’ definitions.

Week 3: Del.icio.us and Flickr

Here's my photo sharing and delicious sites.
By the way, feel free to beg me to repost the picture of Tom Seleck on my profile. I won't be offended...much.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jsobeske/
http://del.icio.us/jsobeske

Sobeske's Week 2 Reflection

Blogs impress me as a lot of work, especially if you are the one blogging. My first instinct was to use blogs as a way to get students to write more. My thought process was that if the students’ work was public they would try their best to look smart in front of their parents and peers and thus try harder. I teach at a tech center and we are constantly looking for ways to add English Language Arts (ELA) to our curriculum. Blogs seem like a great fit. I got all excited but then I discovered that our school board had decided some time ago (heavy-handedly) that all blog sites should be blocked. When things slow down for me at school I will begin building my case for unblocking blogs and see if I can get the board to move on this issue. Now that I think of it, blogs can answer the “Postman question” on several levels for me. Here are a few problems that blogs could answer:

• Students don’t have a way to prove publicly and often that they can think and deeply.
• Parents don’t have a easy way to see their students’ work.
• Tech Centers don’t have a way to publicly and often prove they teach ELA within their curriculum.
• Students don’t get a chance to see all other students’ work..

If RSS feeds are not the coolest darn things I have seen in a while, they are certainly the most useful Web 2.0 tool I have seen. I have discovered the hard way that some sites are not really great for feeds due to the fact that I would have to live in front of my computer to keep up with the new content. Examples of bad pages to get fed are weather.com and foxnews.com. My technology current event sites are great for feeds and I love being able to see what’s new on them.

As a tool for teaching, RSS feeds most closely align themselves to Edgar Dale’s “Visual symbols” level of the cone. The stories from the feed are often abstract representations of the point being made. The actual level of the cone involved would be RSS feed dependant due to the fact a feed could be text, pictures, charts or video. The RSS feed could align its self to virtually every cone level.

Some inherent strengths of a Web Log are that the blog is instantly viewable world wide, it allows for comments from readers and it stores past entries chronologically. These strengths inherently answer the problems stated above. There is no other medium that can give stake holders access to student work they way blogs can. Students love recognition and blogs can give a student a stage more consistently than anything else a school has.

RSS feeds/readers can be used to automatically alert students to new material the teacher would like them to experience. For students in remote locations, this would be one way to stay connected. Parents can use RSS feeds to watch their students’ blog and keep apprised of their progress.

Wikis

I wasn’t clear if I was to address the subject of wikis here or on the PBWiki site its self. I’ll do it here and on the wiki. I hope that’s ok.

This was my first time actually using a wiki and I must say, it was quite different than I anticipated it would be. I found that it was actually easier to collaborate than I would have guessed. My group had some very talented members and that made the experience great for me. What surprised me was how helpful having the email notices sent every time there was an edit. The deletions in red and additions in green made noticing the changes easy.

The disappointing thing was that the editing wasn’t as WYSIWYG as I would have liked. Dragging content around involved getting into the code and that’s always a bit worrisome for me. Perhaps I was doing something wrong. I was also surprised that the wiki didn’t look the same at my school as it does at home. I expected a few differences but the text flows around the picture nicely at home and not at school.

I might consider a wiki in my classroom as a prep for future online collaborative efforts my students might find themselves in. I can’t say that I can think of any problems I have that wikis help me solve but I’ll keep thinking.

Week 1 Reflection - Reigeluth v Postman

Week One Reflection
Joe Sobeske

I’m not a fan of reflecting. It’s hard. It makes me think. It requires me to use higher cognitive functions which makes me tired…and better.

Before me today are two articles written by highly educated people. To grossly summarize, in one, the author sees the need of a paradigm shift in educational thinking; where technology is an indispensable part of the implementation of this change. The author of the other article sees no educational problem that can be solved by technology. Here’s what I think:

Reigeluth makes good points when he talks about a learner-focused paradigm. Few today would disagree that the teacher is more effective as the guide on the side rather than the sage on the stage. Or that teaching in meaningful contexts leads to better understanding. Much of this learner-focus sounds good at the theory level. Practically speaking, I take issue with much of what Reigeluth purports. I don’t believe his premise that our current educational system is Darwinistic and I don’t believe it is necessary to teach to a level of mastery before a student progresses. Reigeluth seems to think this learner-focused paradigm will eliminate what he calls “sorting.” I think the level of individualization of instruction he describes will result in even more stratification of students, not less. Let me explain.

WARNING: Here comes my pragmatic side: Most students are not highly motivated. If we let them have all the time they need to achieve mastery before moving to the next skill, many of them will take four years of High School to achieve mastery on the first skill. If students are left to explore only what they are interested in, many will flounder in indecision, not knowing what they want and will take the path of least resistance leaving them farther behind the motivated, goal-oriented students than they would have been under the “old” system. To quote a supervising teacher I had during my student teaching; “ the smart will get smarter and the dumb will get dumber”. A result arguably worse than “sorting.” Students need strong, caring teachers who can gently but firmly push them.

Students don’t gravitate toward exploring new ideas and if we left them to exclusively explore their own interests they would seldom be exposed to concepts outside their sphere of experiences. Here’s a quick example. One of my students is a long haired skateboarder type. He had no interest in joining our youth club Business Professionals of America (BPA). After speaking with his mother during parent-teacher conferences, I decided and she agreed that he should join. I told him he had no choice (a white lie). Prior to his involvement in BPA, this 16 year old student had never joined a school youth club or team of any kind, never competed in any formal academic contests, he had never even wore a tie. I didn’t leave it up to him, I pushed him into BPA regional contests. I forced him to prepare and convinced him to go to Goodwill and buy appropriate attire. I wish I could say he performed well enough to advance to State competition but I can say he was pushed way beyond his comfort zone, exposed to positive influences and he was made aware of a set of norms that were out of his sphere of experience. He would be a lesser person had he not been lead, somewhat reluctantly at first, into this learning experience. His comments to other classmates and his awareness of common business etiquette demonstrates a growth of maturity on his part. The “authenticity” and “self-directed learning” that Reigeluth describes would have left this student out this valuable experience.

I’m beginning to like Neil Postman. He is simple. Technology in the classroom is fine, he seems to say, as long as we know before hand why we need it. I don’t think I’m taking too much liberty by saying he would agree that technology could and should be used to fix educational problems but if some educational piece isn’t broke, don’t try fixing it with technology. I can get behind that type of thinking with one proviso: we define “broke” as not the best teaching practice. In other words, if some learning can happen better with technology, by all means use technology. I think Postman would agree.

What I really like about Postman is his courage to ask the fundamental question. What is the reason for education? I also like the panache he has in answering his own question: “to teach children how to behave in groups.” Simple, pithy and probably more right than wrong. I can’t wait to read the book he quotes by Robert Fulghum: All I Ever Really Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten. Students today do access to all the information in the world. They will flounder if they don’t have the skills needed to physically and appropriately act and react in the world. This key point, which Reigeluth gives a nod to (peer-assisted learning), Postman makes paramount. A motivated student will do what it takes to learn, even when it is hard. Ask any kid who taught his self how to fix his own computer; if they want to learn they will. The basic concept Postman would advocate us instilling into students is this: Do what you are supposed to do. If we teach students that, the teaching will take care of its self and we teachers can step in with technology to facilitate with best practices.

This all leads me back to my brain taxing reflecting. It is a good example of what Postman got me thinking about and perhaps it is a good parallel to what we need to do with students:

• Getting a Masters degree is what I’m supposed to do. It’s no opinion for me, it’s fact. It is a value I have acquired and I am motivated. We need to teach students this sense of responsibility to themselves.
• Left to my own devices I would not do this. I am pushed each time to do it. We need to push students to stretch their minds into areas where they perhaps are reluctant to go.
• When I’m through, my thoughts on the subject at hand are much clearer and I am able to articulate them easily and more intelligently. I feel smarter and more confident when I’m done. When students feel smarter and more confident they are better equipped to be productive in society and we have done our job.
  
  I think it’s time for a nap.