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!