Reading this week's assignments finally made everything start to click! I think I finally realize what we are doing and the purpose behind it. O.K. I admit I'm a little slow. I was having a hard time connecting what we were reading to what we were doing. I underlined a sentence in the article "Experts Edge" to describe how I was feeling, and I quote, "In many contemporary training programs, all information is provided before practice starts and is presented in a manner that unnecessarily increases extraneous cognitive load." No offense intended, but I was feeling the extraneous cognitive load.
As I read chapter 9 on developing instructional materials, everything started to make sense. Maybe it was the part about "staying focused". Ya, I admit I have a problem with that. That's why they give me all the ADHD kids in my class. Anyway, I was able to see how we need to understand the development phase in order to proceed with our class assignment of developing our online instruction. I learned the importance of making the instruction concrete and controlling the step size.
The section on self-paced learning reminded me of an article I read recently on home-schooling. I am not a proponent of home-schooling, however, if someone is set on home-schooling their children, self-paced learning seems to me to be the best option. As an educator, I would feel better about children be schooled at home by this method rather than being taught strictly by their, possibly competent, parents.
When I was searching for the best program to complete my Master's Degree I first looked at online programs. I looked into the University of Phoenix. One of the strengths was being able to do it on my own schedule. However, one of the weaknesses was doing it on my own schedule ...and the lack of "self discipline combined with procrastination." Another limitation was cost. It was extremely expensive. In the end, I was grateful for the e-mail I received from UVU promoting this Masters program. It seem to fit the bill for me.
Back to the reading... I did not feel the ADDIE article on successful training development or prototypes applied as much as the Course Development Process, Tabletop Review and Pilot Testing. Course Development requires us to make sure the material meets the learning objectives and if the material will work. One question I had is if you want us to assign specific tasks within our teams such as writer, editor, graphic designer? (You probably already told us this, but I was probably trying to figure out how to use my computer. ) The goal of the tabletop review is to make sure the content is accurate and complete. It is important for us to go through our project to check for accuracy and completeness. (Was that redundant?) My question for the Pilot Testing is whether we should test it or have a child of appropriate age test it. Wouldn't it be more beneficial to have a child test it to make sure it is child-friendly?
I have not added to our project online this week because my computer is in Memphis hopefully receiving some "logic." However, I have been adding to my part of the lesson plans and gathering ideas and websites for our group. We seem to be on schedule. Our main problem may be having too much and having to scale down before our "table top review."
Now the question is...have I put you on cognitive overload?
Thanks for all you do and being so patient with us.
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Thanks for the 2nd chance to try this blog writing again. When I got home today, my computer wouldn't start up or shut down, it wouldn't even recharge with the plug. You know, my computer is the one with the big crack. Anyway, I'll have to take it in. So, I am using my daughter's pc which I have no idea how to use, so bear with me.
As far as my reflection for last week, I am trying it over. My readings included Chapters 5-8, ADDIE Design Phase, John Keller's ARCS, Blooom's Taxonomy, but not Maslow's Heirarchy as I could not get that to load.
In Chapter 5 I focused on the need for objectives. I realized that stated objectives are necessary for both the teacher and the student. For the teacher, objectives guide the instruction and for the leaner, objectives help them plan and prepare and let them know what the expectation is.
Chapter 6 highlights for me were the benefits of using sequencing. Sequencing provides the opportunity to organize the conent to a scheme and provide a method for presenting the content.
Chapter 7 probably had the most meaning for me. It involved strategies. I always seem to be looking for better strategies to make my teaching more meaningful. I appreciated the steps that were lined out on how to design your instructional strategies by reviewing each objective to determine in which cell it fits best, to generate a strategy, and finally to develop the instruction based on that strategy.
In Chapter 8, I chose to focus on using pictures with my instruction. Pictures can provide concrete references and are used to interpret text, especially in the primary grades.
I felt that Bloom's Taxonomy was a lot of reading and a lot of review. It could have been wrapped up on one page "in a nutshell": the three domains, cognitive, affective & psychomotor and the concept of developing competence by stages.
The reading I got the most out of was John Keller's ARCS. According to Keller, there are four steps in the instructional design process. Attention, using surprise and stimulating curiosity. Relevance, increasing motivation by meeting needs, modeling, and choice. Confidence, by allowing the learners to succeed. Satisfaction, based on motivation not by over-rewarding or negative consequences.
As far as our practical learning as a team, I feel we are right on track or maybe even ahead of the game. Lucky for me, we have very computer savvy and talented people on our team (ie: Mary). We have decided on a content area, maps, that is covered in both the 1st and 2nd grade content. This way we will all be able to reep the benefits of this project in our teaching this year. We have mapped out our Map curriculum (ha, ha, get it..."mapped out"). We have chosen four objectives to work with. Each of us has added our content to our task analysis chart. We pretty much all have our basic lesson plans. We have found a video to go with our theme and posted it. We have started our story board. We have all of our pictures in order but we are still working on the text and music. Mary helped me (well truthfully, she pretty much did it, but it was my idea!) to have a song with music and text for the students to learn. We are choosing between several webquests. As we come across websites that we think are relevant, we add the link to our site so we can all view them and then choose the ones we want to use. The funniest part about our site is the way Mary and Angela keep going in and changing each others templates. I guess whichever one is there when we present, will be the one that stays, or they can change it later for their own use.
On a personal note, I have created a class website. So far I have a welcome page with my contact information, a News! page, a supply list and my daily schedule posted. I still need to add a Resource page among some other pages I would like to add.
So, I think that about covers it. I was a little overwhelmed today with storyboard, but luckily Mary has it all under control. Afterall, I only just created my very first powerpoint yesterday! Yea! See, I am learning.
Thanks again for all your help and especially your PATIENCE!
As far as my reflection for last week, I am trying it over. My readings included Chapters 5-8, ADDIE Design Phase, John Keller's ARCS, Blooom's Taxonomy, but not Maslow's Heirarchy as I could not get that to load.
In Chapter 5 I focused on the need for objectives. I realized that stated objectives are necessary for both the teacher and the student. For the teacher, objectives guide the instruction and for the leaner, objectives help them plan and prepare and let them know what the expectation is.
Chapter 6 highlights for me were the benefits of using sequencing. Sequencing provides the opportunity to organize the conent to a scheme and provide a method for presenting the content.
Chapter 7 probably had the most meaning for me. It involved strategies. I always seem to be looking for better strategies to make my teaching more meaningful. I appreciated the steps that were lined out on how to design your instructional strategies by reviewing each objective to determine in which cell it fits best, to generate a strategy, and finally to develop the instruction based on that strategy.
In Chapter 8, I chose to focus on using pictures with my instruction. Pictures can provide concrete references and are used to interpret text, especially in the primary grades.
I felt that Bloom's Taxonomy was a lot of reading and a lot of review. It could have been wrapped up on one page "in a nutshell": the three domains, cognitive, affective & psychomotor and the concept of developing competence by stages.
The reading I got the most out of was John Keller's ARCS. According to Keller, there are four steps in the instructional design process. Attention, using surprise and stimulating curiosity. Relevance, increasing motivation by meeting needs, modeling, and choice. Confidence, by allowing the learners to succeed. Satisfaction, based on motivation not by over-rewarding or negative consequences.
As far as our practical learning as a team, I feel we are right on track or maybe even ahead of the game. Lucky for me, we have very computer savvy and talented people on our team (ie: Mary). We have decided on a content area, maps, that is covered in both the 1st and 2nd grade content. This way we will all be able to reep the benefits of this project in our teaching this year. We have mapped out our Map curriculum (ha, ha, get it..."mapped out"). We have chosen four objectives to work with. Each of us has added our content to our task analysis chart. We pretty much all have our basic lesson plans. We have found a video to go with our theme and posted it. We have started our story board. We have all of our pictures in order but we are still working on the text and music. Mary helped me (well truthfully, she pretty much did it, but it was my idea!) to have a song with music and text for the students to learn. We are choosing between several webquests. As we come across websites that we think are relevant, we add the link to our site so we can all view them and then choose the ones we want to use. The funniest part about our site is the way Mary and Angela keep going in and changing each others templates. I guess whichever one is there when we present, will be the one that stays, or they can change it later for their own use.
On a personal note, I have created a class website. So far I have a welcome page with my contact information, a News! page, a supply list and my daily schedule posted. I still need to add a Resource page among some other pages I would like to add.
So, I think that about covers it. I was a little overwhelmed today with storyboard, but luckily Mary has it all under control. Afterall, I only just created my very first powerpoint yesterday! Yea! See, I am learning.
Thanks again for all your help and especially your PATIENCE!
Monday, June 8, 2009
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