Week 6 R/D 11

“Reflect on what you perceive to be your own areas of strength and what competencies you feel you need to work hardest to develop given your professional goals.”

For me it is much easier to discuss my short comings rather than my strengths. I guess that’s my nature. It is also my nature to do the hardest part first so I will discuss my strengths first.

I was self-employed for over 15 years in sales. Much of what I learned in the selling profession now come second nature to me. The competencies discussed in this chapter which I would consider to be my strengths are the same ones that come naturally to any good sales person. Take for instance, conducting a needs assessment, communicate effectively, effective presentation skills and stimulating and sustaining learner motivation. These are selling skills and these are areas where I feel comfortable. I have no problem presenting my ideas and feeling comfortable in front of other people. Motivating people is how sales people earn their living. Of course you can hardly motivate someone to do something unless it is what they wanted all along which is needs analysis. I would say these competencies are my strengths.

Under the heading of “Instructional Methods & Strategies” on page 275, I would like to work on promoting retention of knowledge and skills. In my program, we learn a very diverse set of skills all year long. Often I find that skills that the students (and sometimes myself) seem to have down pat early in the year are almost gone by Christmas break. If I could learn ways to improve retention this would be a big help.

Under the “Responsibilities to Society” heading under the “Instructor” column on page 277, I would like to develop “Recognize that when encountering a wide diversity of learners, some may come from different cultures and be accustomed to different societies.” My program, so far, has had during my tenure a pretty non-diverse population of students but I suspect that will change. I have a tendency to joke with students and they respond well to it. I fear that some of my humor may need to be adjusted when I get the Hispanic students with developing English language skills or the Arabic students with quite different cultural norms from what I am used to that other programs in my building get routinely. I want to be able to establish the rapport I currently enjoy with my students with any student God sees fit to send through my door.

Several of the competencies use the word “organization.” Professional speaking this is perhaps my greatest weakness. I tend to be the creative leader in a group and sometimes details do not get followed up on. This is a bad thing in any profession and especially bad in a profession where plans need to be monitored and reported upon. Organization is an area which I would like to develop personally because it will make me more effective as an educator as well as someone who hopes to implement educational technology in my district.

Week 6 - R/D10

Throughout the readings of chapters 18, 21 and 22 I have noticed the themes of leadership, team membership, and understanding the stakeholders which I will call listening. All three chapters spoke about the role of Instructional Designers (ID) in differing applications: business, P-12 education and higher education, yet these three themes, leadership and team-membership and listening, came up time and time again.

In Chapter 18 which spoke about the role of ID in Business and industry, the roles of ID was described as either a sole designer, consultant or team member/leader (Page 176). In the first two business roles the book describes, leadership and listening play critical roles The ID first understands what is needed by actively listening and then leads the client to a appropriate solution by taking a leadership role in the design process. Of course none of what the ID does can operate in a vacuum and the design process is iterative, so the ID must work as a member of a team to create the final product which is acceptable to all stake holders.

The trends and issues described in Chapter 21 talk about all three of these themes throughout the chapter. Several school districts’ transformation projects were highlighted and in all of them the ID had to understand, listen to, all interested parties from both within and outside the school building. The book mentions leadership teams on page 216 which, of course requires team work and IDs work with parents, teachers and other stakeholders in developing goals and plans.

Chapter 22 dealt with ID roles in higher education. The unsurprising parts of the chapter described the ID working with faculty improving instruction. These parts inherently had aspects of the themes of leadership, team membership and listening pretty much as described above from Chapters 18 and 21. The surprising parts of Chapter 22 are actually quite different from the prior two in that they describe the IDs role in academia. We read about tenure concerns, “publish or perish” anxiety and job satisfaction. Even through these very practical sections of the role of ID in higher education the three themes are represented. ID’s are called upon to listen as the council graduate students. They are called upon to take leadership of their hectic schedules so that the details of academic advisement doesn’t lead them to loose sight of the importance of research. They are required to think as a team member so their institutions can remain appealing and thus competitive in an competitive environment.

In summary, if I had to choose three significant themes which ran throughout these chapters, the three themes of leadership, team membership and listening are the ones I would choose. They certainly are demonstrated in all three chapters as important aspects of the role of the instructional designer.

Week 5 Map Lesson

My map idea is to have students take me on a virtual tour of colleges or trade schools they are considering attending after High School. My students would be responsible for showing on the map the location of at least three schools via a pin on the map. Each school would need two maps created for it as follows. One map would show where the school is in general, the other map would show points of interest around the school’s campus itself. The main general location map would have at least three locations pins an those pins would need to describe what makes the student interested in that college. The pin would also need a link to the college’s web site and a descriptive picture of the college on the college location pin as well. The more campus map would show the location of the registrar’s office, the building which houses the department(s) they are interested in and some of the dorms. In the description on the pin would have a link to a separate Google map titled “Tour the campus” which would zoom in on the campus itself and have pins inserted for a few stops around campus.

This exercise would help students get a good visceral feel for the college choices they are considering. It will help them in planning a college visit and help their parents visualize the options as well.

Week 5 Map

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Week 5 R/D9

So far I have found the technology-related assignments useful and fun. I like discovering new Web 2.0 capabilities and this course gives me a good chance to actually try them out.

The one assignment so far I found particularly useful is the collaboration WIKI project. I had dipped my toe (so to speak) into the WIKI waters in another course. I understood that it could be used to collaborate but until I actually did this project, I never realized the extent it could be used. I like getting the email notifications of changes. That’s almost like a RSS feed except better because the changes are precisely highlighted. Very useful. I will be attempting some sort of WIKI activity in my classroom in the future.

I haven’t found the activities all that difficult yet although as I write this I have yet to attempt the Google Maps activity for this week. I viewed the examples and it looks like fun. I’m anxious to try it out.

Video, screen-captured demonstrations, and POD casts seem to be powerful tools for Web based instruction. I would have liked to seen some of that in this course. Hearing, or better yet seeing the instructor would go a long way toward giving this inherently impersonal medium a human touch.

I’m excitedly looking forward to the lessons ahead, especially the technology related parts. I can't say that I'm a big fan of the text. I know theory is important but I would like the authors to give more practically useful information. That being said, getting the opportunity to actually try out new technology is really interesting and fun.

Week 5 R/D8

The two issues that struck me in Chapter 21 are the Ecological Systemic Change process and the idea of community forums to help implement changes in the school system.

The Ecological approach to educational reform was interesting to me because of the fact it recognizes that change doesn’t happen in a vacuum. A change in one area is going to affect other areas. It seems like this tries to anticipate the often unanticipated and negative changes which occur when change is put upon a school district. Had the designers of the No Child Left Behind Act or the Michigan Merritt Curriculum took a more ecological view in the planning stages, many problems could have been forecasted and fixed before they became the untenable burdens to districts they are becoming.

Community forums just make sense. After reading the chapter it now seems obvious to me that community forums need to happen every time significant change is considered. The text’s account of the Decature Township’s use of community forums (page 216) demonstrates a well thought out plan of change. All the excellent planning in the world is wasted if all stakeholders don’t feel ownership in the process. I thought it was particularly wise to have community members and the teacher union involved in the planning process from day one. Parents have the potential of being harsh critics of change and tenured teachers have the ability to torpedo the best laid plans because they are on the front-lines of change implementation. Having these two groups involved in the district change planning struck me as particularly wise. Being part of the planning makes these two important groups of stakeholders feel a sense of ownership which would make them more likely to be advocates of the change rather than adversaries to it.

Week 5 R/D7

I found it interesting that high-level evaluation is not simply an end-of-course activity. (text page 180) The concept of "confirmative evaluation" requires that there be a lapse of time between and training and evaluation in order for the evaluation to be to be judged. I can use this in my classroom to help my assessments. I, like most teachers, give my assessments (tests, quizes etc) pretty much immediately following the lesson. This is good but must not be the only assessment. If I really want to confirm that real learning has taken place, I need to give some sort of evaluation after some time has gone by. I suppose this assumes that the training was in a meaningful and reinforced over time. The author describes a continuum of learning which ranges from intent to knowing (I paraphrased a bit here) so I suspect this sort of evaluation is best for skill type activities that get reinforced with practice over time. Fortunately I teach quite a lot of skill based curriculum so this is useful for me.

I liked the discussion on the concept of rapid prototyping methodologies in this chapter as well (page 179). It sort of reminds me of the saying “A good plan now is better than a perfect plan next week.” As described in the chapter, rapid prototyping is an iterative process where design gets roughed in and perfected over time via live feedback from users. I have always said it is a whole lot easier to edit than it is to create so this rings true to me. I can use this in my classroom by getting my good ideas out to students faster without the polish knowing that the best way to get a creative and innovative lesson great is to get it in front of students. Now that I think of it, productivity wise, it is much more efficient to try a slightly unpolished lesson to see if it has potential than it is to spend hours to get every detail of a lesson perfect and then discover it just doesn’t work. Using the concept of rapid prototyping, I can try more ideas and then be more productive spending time polishing the ones with potential.