This Blog tries to capture my thinking as several colleagues and I connect, collaborate, and create learning experiences to build our understanding of instructional design and applications.
I found some clarity in this morning's eLearning Coach blog. Connie Malamed outlines 10 destinations for your instructional design journey. This capsule titled "Finding Your Place in Instructional Design" helps me envision where my own learning might take me.
Within this summary, she embeds a link to an interesting book and author, Angela Connor. 18 Rules for Community Engagement especially caught my eye because the new teachers I'm coaching now are asking questions about engagement. They're also bemoaning the lack of self-motivation in some of the students they've taught this past year. Why aren't my students engaged when I've built this wonderful standards-based program of study for them? How to engage them to become successful has been an over-arching question. While Connor's book is specifically directed to people who manage online communities, I think the principles and pitfalls Connor discusses in her book apply to teachers trying to engage today's students and just about anyone attempting to build a thriving community. And right now I'd like to build such a reflective and collaborative community among the second-year teachers in our two-high school district.
New York Times columnist David Brooks cites research led by Dr. Richard Allington on the positive effects of simply giving 12 self-selected books to 852 disadvantaged students to take home over the summer. They continued this project for 3 years in a row so the students built up a home library. Their reading scores improved significantly compared to other comparable students. That's the good news. The bad news comes from Stanford University's Sanford School of Public Policy where a study examined computer and Internet use of 5 million 5th to 8th grade students in North Carolina. The results there show that the spread of home computers and high-speed internet access between 2000 and 2005 was associated with significant declines in math and reading scores. What do you think of the issue that Brooks raises in his column "The Medium is the Medium?"
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Alan November says that "as we provide our students with models of how to use their 'digital containers' for learning, the role of the teacher will be more crucial than ever. The fact remains: These tools can be a major distraction from learning or they can be a major catalyst to it." He challenges us: "It will be the courageous educator who works with students to explore the power of these tools and in turn empowers students to be lifelong learners and active shapers of a world we cannot yet imagine."
During the school year, I introduced students to the abbreviation cpa, short for the term Continuous Partial Attention coined by Linda Stone. To be expected, all my students could relate to this cultural phenomenon and were quick to point out that it's not only their age demographic that falls prey to cpa. We read several articles as class assignments in preparation for our own Google Survey and argument essay. Our question was based on the Renny Gleeson TED presentation on the Culture of Availability: Can technology make us more human(e)?
Today, Dr. Kristen Purcell will be speaking at the Young Adult Library Services AssociationALA pre-conference in Washington, DC, as part of a panel entitled "Promoting Teen Reading with Web 2.0 Tools." You can follow the preconference at http://sites.google.com/site/yalsareading/home or on Twitter with the hashtag #yalsareading.
Kristen Purcell's work is part of the Pew Internet & American Life Project
Check out this SlideShare presentation. I was most surprised by the statistics on texting.
Last week, when Dr. Ackerman brought out the Black Box and asked us to connect to a learning theory, besides the Skinner connection, I thought of the Dylan Wiliam and Paul Black article Inside the Black Box.
The two use the black box as a metaphor for our classrooms and argue that what we teachers do to manage all the situations that occur in a class period to "help students learn immediately and in the future" is really what matters first. The standards and achievement scores and all the rest of the goals in our race to the top come after we start paying attention to "the processes of teaching and learning" in those black boxes.
Several years ago, I had the chance, along with some of our other teachers, to attend a week-long work session with Dr. Wiliam. We worked to learn just how difficult it is to come up with effective assessments that truly teach us what students know and where they are in the learning continuum. That's been part of the professional development I've been privileged to have.
Seth Godin says the future of education in in small, self-motivated, guided learning communities who examine really important and authentic (read "real-world") problems. These won't necessarily be housed in buildings. He maintains that teachers have to be good at their art. And the education will be free. He takes shots at the old style school because the model was for an industrialized society/community. From his point of view, we all now live in a different society / economy and schools need to be in the business of creating folks who can use their own artistic selves to creatively solve problems in ways others have not. The old schools and their teachers taught "compliance rather than initiative." It's easier to do that
"Compliance is simple to measure, simple to test for and simple to teach. Punish non-compliance, reward obedience and repeat. Initiative is very difficult to teach to 28 students in a quiet classroom. It's difficult to brag about in a school board meeting. And it's a huge pain in the neck to do reliably.
Schools like teaching compliance. They're pretty good at it."
On his blog, Godin says "companies don't want compliance anymore."
In another post, Godin offers a starter list of the purpose(s) of school and hopes this list will at least get a discussion started so we can define what we want school to do.
"The purpose of school is to:
Become an informed citizen
Be able to read for pleasure
Be trained in the rudimentary skills necessary for employment
Do well on standardized tests
Homogenize society, at least a bit
Pasteurize out the dangerous ideas
Give kids something to do while parents work
Teach future citizens how to conform
Teach future consumers how to desire
Build a social fabric
Create leaders who help us compete on a world stage
Generate future scientists who will advance medicine and technology
Learn for the sake of learning
Help people become interesting and productive
Defang the proletariat
Establish a floor below which a typical person is unlikely to fall
Find and celebrate prodigies, geniuses and the gifted
Make sure kids learn to exercise, eat right and avoid common health problems
Teach future citizens to obey authority
Teach future employees to do the same
Increase appreciation for art and culture
Teach creativity and problem solving
Minimize public spelling mistakes
Increase emotional intelligence
Decrease crime by teaching civics and ethics
Increase understanding of a life well lived
Make sure the sports teams have enough players "
Godin's questions about the future change in education aren't limited to K-12 schools. For colleges he wonders whether they'll be available or scare, expensive or free, about a prestigious name or the learning. He warns, "If you think the fallout in the newspaper business was dramatic, wait until you see what happens to education." If he were a betting man, he says," the abundant learning combination is the one that's going to change the world."
School is a complete failure. " Teachers are the key to the whole deal. We need teachers to care so much that they can't stop pushing until they create change in the students who really need (and deserve) it." The Linchpin link will take you to a You Tube video "Seth Godin on Education."
I agree that there are some communities where the school has failed miserably, despite pockets of brilliance in some classes. For these communities, failure of leadership is just one of the obstacles to learning. And Godin's right, more money will not improve the conditions in those schools. In some communities too many people have abdicated their responsibility to teach, starting with parents, a child's first and primary teacher.
I particularly appreciated one commentator's remark that there really isn't much new in Godin's agenda. That pushing the humanities and critical thinking projects and teaching leadership to everyone has been around for a decade or more and it still hasn't changed things.
From my humble perspective, I believe that not everyone does live in an information-only society. There aren't just people with a passion to be artists. Some want to live as the artisan (the plumber, the electrician, the carpenter/cabinet maker) -- not everyone has the ability, even if it's not politically correct to tell them, to be Picasso, to be Sir Isaac Newton, to be Colin Powell. For my part, I'm glad we have good mechanics.
Recently, I read a letter from the parent of one of our school's graduates. The young man had been studying auto mechanics. He became interested in engineering when one of our teachers got him involved in a bridge building competition. The parent wrote in to say that the aspiring auto mechanic now has a master's degree in Civil/Mechanical Engineering and his design was chosen for a bridge in Pedricktown, New Jersey.
Godin doesn't seem to see or believe that there are many routes right through the middle of our public school system to become a wonderful leader, an ingenious problem solver, or an inspiring artist. I believe our schools K to 16 have been a great experiment in attempting to teach everyone. Few school systems around the world even attempt that.
Like Godin, I believe that teachers are the key and that teachers need to get better at their art every day, every year. I believe the work of researchers like Robert Marzano Classroom Instruction That Works or Doug Lemov Teach Like a Champion will help codify the techniques and show teachers what works, not just tell them.
I believe schools are changing and that technology will help propel this change. I also know that change is a slow process because people's values change slowly. And learning, even teacher's learning, occurs slowly over time with lots of practice and patience. There is no silver bullet.
I also read an interview with Seth Godin by Barbara Bray about education and change as well as his latest book. When asked about job training in the future, Godin offered "I think there are some things that the jobs of future have in common, and I hope that we can start measuring this and focusing on this and stop obsessing about the length of the hypotenuse.
1. Solve interesting problems.
2. Be self reliant.
3. Find the information you need from the Net and other places.
4. Connect.
5. Lead.
6. Invent.
7. Fail.
8. Learn from #7 and repeat."
Barbara Bray, an Educational Consultant, President/Owner of My eCoach, writes a regular column on professional development for OnCUE and is active on social media sharing her views about the future of education.
When I went to the Classroom 2.0 archive for Elluminate discussions and listened to that webinar, Godin's remarks included ideas related to balancing the practical realities of making a living and going out there to create the kind of change he envisions:
Downsize
Cut your costs
Go out on a limb
Get in trouble
Mavericks are rarely punished or expelled
If you’re good at your art and they expel you, you will go somewhere else and make a difference
And for parents interested in effecting change
Start a Mother-Son or a Father-Daughter Book Club
Read something challenging
Something that will start a conversation like “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”
Once a week get together and create the right kind of conversation
Steve Hargadon, who created Classroom 2.0, also has a print interview with Seth Godin at that website.
Linchpin may just be another on this summer's growing reading list.
I've begun working on my Insight Summary. This will take some time because I'm reading interviews, and blogs. I'm listening to an Elluminate discussion which occurred this morning at Classroom 2.0 and viewing a video all centering on Seth Godin's perception of how education is changing -- both public secondary education and higher education. I'll be updating soon.
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Saturday's NJEA / Stockton Technology Conference began in Alton Auditorium after coffee with Darryl Ensminger, Dr. Jung Lee, and the CCTS contingent: Dennis, Judi, Frank, and Mike Ritzius.
Mike was a Google presenter in the break-out sessions, which began right after keynote speaker Patrick Higgins explained how technology isn't an add-on in our daily lives, it just is. Classroom practice using technology is no longer on the horizon; it's here. And it's liberating. "Let's stop talking about technology integration; let's talk about learning!"
As an aside, Patrick's blog Chalkdust 101 had a fascinating post about Professional Development that comes to the learner. Two technology specialists "offer sessions live online using Skype and a screen-sharing program called Yugma (both free) to teach you about various social software applications and the possibilities for their use in the classroom." I'm wondering how that same kind of collaboration and learning might work if the topics were more about instructional design, pre-assessing, chunking the learning, assessing, pacing, and face-to-face class management. Hmmm? Could that be a capstone project?
Judi and I headed over to an Introduction to Thinkfinity. I'm glad we picked that one. I walked away with three resources I'm using this week with my Honors Freshmen. Thinkfinity is a website that offers thousands of K-12 lesson plans, inter-actives, and more. There are strategies for integrating Web-based resources into classroom learning, links to discipline-specific Websites that focus on science, humanities, history, math language arts, financial literacy and more.
Theresa Gibbon was our presenter and she was great! She welcomed us to the Thinkfinity Community which is another online collaboration group. Thinkfinity's community hosts are also available online for questions.
My freshmen honors are still working on their persuasive essays on the question "Does technology make us more human(e)?" This week they're building a survey in Google Docs to find out what their classmates, teachers, and administrators think. I'm also teaching them about surveys, random sampling, and so on. We'll watch a video on multitasking from MIT that I discovered on Thinkfinity. We may even take a peek at Digital Nation a little later.
Saturday, May 1, 2010 was a full but satisfying day, with the last session ending about 4 pm and lots to think about on the way home.
We had a good group meeting this afternoon to sketch out our History of Educational Media. I hoped everyone left with that "Cumbaya - Good vibes" feeling.
I'm really giving some thought to Gagne's Nine Steps of Instruction and its application in our group's project as well as in my own classroom instruction. Not that many years back, I had the opportunity to attend Pat Wolfe's week-long "Brain Matters" Conference in Napa, California. Pat is an extraordinarily gifted presenter who deftly weaves her stories into the educational implications of the most recent brain research. Before the conference, we were required to read her book of the same name and three others besides.
The quote at Pat's Website illustrates why her passion is to teach us about why the brain matters. "Education is discovering the brain and that's about the best news there could be... Anyone who does not have a thorough, holistic grasp of the brain's architecture, purposes, and main ways of operating is as far behind the times as an automobile designer without a full understanding of engines." Leslie Hart, "Human Brain, Human Learning"
The little bit I've read of Robert Gagne connects in many ways to those readings. At least I recall some of what Pat taught us. Gagne uses the phrase "stimuli activates receptors" and I think of Pat's explanation of how neural transmitters [chemicals] move toward neural receptors traveling from axon to dendrites to axon and across the gaps between in an electrochemical cascade. And all that's just to get their attention.
I wonder in the culture of distraction, impatience, and over-stimulation, in which we all live, whether it's more difficult now to get the learner's attention than in the past.
My Honors English Freshmen are examining Renny Gleeson's TED Talk, where he asks us all to create technology that makes us more human(e). The students have read about Linda Stone's concept of "CPA" -- constant partial attention and its effects. But they've also read articles calling for the use of cellphone technology in the classrooms. They're going to generate information by surveying their classmates and teachers on their usage and attitudes before they compose their papers. This should be interesting. I see among some of them a compulsion to be available all day and night to all the people in their address book. But they have lots of ideas about how they could put their phones to work in class. Don't you just love em?
Last night the cohort met in F-111 at The Richard Stockton College of New Jersey to "Take a Closer Look" at what the end might be. The showcase of final projects included impressive presentations by Mary Irwin - "CSI Boot Camp," Jennifer Babcock's "Integrating Technology with Administrative Tasks," Catherine Moore's "Professional Development for 21st Century Technology Skills,"Eileen Anaya's "Vocabulary Development Using Interactive Web-Based Tools," and Peter Dolcy's "Videogames as Motivational Tools in the General Classroom."
We were warmly welcomed with catered wraps, sandwiches, and finger foods and a rich redskin potato salad. We applauded all the presenters for their hard work made to look easy and cheered for the Capstone Advisor, Amy Ackerman when the achievement of her tenure was announced.
On the ride home we talked about the projects we had seen, our own prospective projects, and the group work we're involved in now.
I'm making my way slowly and appreciate when people point me in the right direction. So I'm taking a close look at "The Nine" by Robert Gagne. What a privilege we enjoy as students of Gagne's protege.So I discover according to eLearning Guru that "Robert Gagne is considered to be the foremost researcher and contributor to the systematic approach to instructional design and training. Gagne and his followers are known as behaviorists and their focus is on the outcomes - or behaviors -that result from training."The Conditions of Learning first published in 1965 identified the mental conditions for learning. Gagne created a nine step process that addresses the conditions of learning. The steps are called the Nine Events of Instruction: from "Gain Attention" to "Enhance retention and transfer to job"
I'm still reading but now it's 9 and I've got to wind this post up!
My classmates in the Stockton College Master of Arts in Instructional Technology degree program know that I'm a big fan of TED and I belong to the wiki Teaching with TED that's managed by Dr. Ellen Gerstein. I love both these resources.
It's sometimes difficult to remain positive in the changing landscape of education and the challenges of life in these times." Szymusiak continued, praising Zander's book, "I wasn't disappointed. Zander and his wife set out to write an unusual how-to book to encourage readers to consider the unlimited possibility of our lives." And, I thought, "Isn't that one of the most important objectives for any of us teachers?"
You don't have to twist my arm to watch one of these TED talks and so I spent the next twenty minutes fascinated and moved by this man's contagious enthusiasm. Zander is the conductor of the Boston Philharmonic but this talk is as much about the power of positive thinking and acting even in the face of stark skepticism.
After watching this TED talk, I went back to the newsletter to see what the editor, Brenda Power, an author herself, might suggest. She recommendedPresentation Zenby Garr Reynolds and called it "a must read for a professional book - it really makes you rethink everything about how you present information, or even what public presentations are about."
And, of course, that got me thinking of Dr. Ackerman's last class when she was giving us presentation tips. So I previewed Reynolds' book on Amazon -- very Zen-- simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.
Like Karen and Brenda have, I may put these two on my summer reading list. I have an interest in learning how to stay positive and how to convince people of their potential, of the many possibilities of their lives.
Grandmother's Day Is Tomorrow - April 25. Now, when I first read this at a Website called Care2 Make a Difference, I thought, "Someone has created another holiday to make some money." The author claims, however, that her motive was to get "grandmothers [to] gather their grandchildren and pass on the abilities these elders have within." So, I sent my children a "heads up" to call their Grandmom and make her day. We all live within a time line and I guess marking a time for grandmoms is a good thing.I spent part of today searching for information that might underlie our group's topic presentation on The History of Instructional Media. I read through the work of several folks and viewed several time lines. Allison Moreland, for example, has a brief time line at her Blog called Learning in Bits. It's pretty cool; it has an interactive option. I also examined a great Timetoast on Media History by drtw and another was part of a pdf file entitled Instructional Technology and Theory authored by Robert Whelan at NYU but the best time line of all I found on You Tube set to a jazzy beat.
I also read articles and sent my partners what I've found so far. So maybe on one of these Grandfather's Days in the future my grandchildren may gather around me and I'll be able to pass on to them some top notch technology skills as part of my legacy.
Last night after class, I signed up for Jing at home and began to play with this application and its companion -- Screencast -- until I couldn't hold my eyes open any more.
I must have dreamed about rainbows because this morning I couldn't shake from my head the song "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" -- Do you know the version by Israel Kamakawiwo Ole'? I guess it's understandable after last night's class. We were interrupted a bit when a double rainbow appeared, arrayed against a stormy sky at sunset. We all hurried outside to express our wonder.
After oooh's and aaah's and digital cameras were put away, we went back to work finishing a scavenger hunt to acquaint us with navigating Blackboard at the Richard Stockton College portal, trying to estimate the simplicity or complexity of our course contracts, as well as teaming up to tackle a group project. My group landed a presentation of the history of instructional media. We debated what presentation tool to use: Prezi, Google, or PowerPoint until Dr. Ackerman reminded us that the end objective needs to be the focus before the tool selection.
Today, My Google Alerts offered me eleven sites to explore related to Instructional Design, including Associate Professor Michael Grant's blog titled "Viral-Notebook." What caught my attention was a posting entitled "The Landscape of PowerPoint for eLearning" In it, he says,
Development
"Instructional designers and developers have told me
that they use PowerPoint for storyboarding.
PowerPoint is simple enough that subject matter
experts can even input the information (note that's
information, not instruction). The process of moving
from design to development quickly through
storyboarding offers a lot of promise for quickly
presenting a visual product.
Delivery
The other way for using PowerPoint with eLearning is
to use it as a delivery vehicle for the instruction. The
most obvious method is for a trainer or instructor to
present with a PowerPoint presentation. This is
certainly where all the ideas about improving
presentations would most easily fit."
Then I read more comments from other visitors to Viral-Notebook and then added this blog to my Google Reader.
You've got it, all the while, I'm humming that darn tune about problems melting like lemon drops and leaving the stars far behind me. If you've never seen or heard this version of the song "Somewhere Over the Rainbow," don't go to the link! It will be the indelible lullaby of your dreams tonight.
Today, I went back to Surya Dutta's blog and decided to reread her notions about the dichotomy within instructional design:
"I have always wondered about the two aspects of instructional design: the theoretical side and the application side. I see how each time application tends to fall behind on going research. By the time you build a system to add in the most current trend, there is already something new. I believe this is the way it works in other domains as well, but the question that keeps running in my mind, is how does one reduce this gap? The smaller the gap, the more connected research will be with application. For example, if someone researches and writes about the ADDIE theory and I have to implement it in my organization, it is most common that I will not able to implement it as it is defined in books. What will likely happen, is that the way I work through it in my work place, gets driven by actual events that occur, functioning of other departments associated with the completion of my task and so on. I personally feel that research should not just run parallel to application. There has to be a means to constantly go back and forth between the two, take into account dependencies when writing a theory, and finally define more realistic theories and processes. It is important not to look at each domain in isolation and imagine it implemented in a running organization with real-time challenges."
Of course, this had me scratching my head and wondering who ADDIE is. She sounds like my great aunt. In the lower right side of Surya's blog, she has posted favorite links. The link named "Designing Instruction" looked promising and so I was off.
This brought me to Renssalaer University's Course Development page entitled "Designing Instruction." I clicked on the overview to read more. Listed here were about 38 different directions in which I could go under the categories Instructional Design, Course Development, Models and Theories, and Tools. There was an extensive bibliography at the bottom and I recognized none of the names. Why is it, I wondered, that the educational researchers and theorists I do know don't seem to show up on a page like this. Where are people in the field like Robert Marzano, Wiggins and McTighe, or Anne Davies -- people I've come to respect.
I scrolled down to Models and Theories and saw a Wikipedia entry that answered my earlier question about Great Aunt Addie.
There are many good instructional design models that are customized to meet specific needs. The ADDIE model is a commonly used approach that can be effective in almost every learning or teaching situation. The ADDIE model is the generic process traditionally used by instructional designers and training developers. The five phases—Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation, and Evaluation—represent a dynamic, flexible guideline.
Most of the current instructional design models are spin-offs or variations of the ADDIE model; other models include the Dick & Carey and Kemp ISD models. One commonly accepted improvement to this model is the use of rapid prototyping. This is the idea of receiving continual or formative feedback while instructional materials are being created. This model attempts to save time and money by catching problems while they are still easy to fix. Instructional theories also play an important role in the design of instructional materials. Theories such as behaviorism, constructivism, social learning and cognitivism help shape and define the outcome of instructional materials.
Wikipedia
I skimmed the rest of the page recognizing some of the tools, Inspiration for one, which now has a spinoff Web 2.0 Tool called Webspiration. Thy probably need to stay in competition with Mindmeister, another tool we have a little experience with.
Enough for today's exploring. Great Aunt Addie turns out to be an acronym and I'm sure just one of the relatives we'll learn about in the days ahead.
On Thursday last week a cohort --about eleven of us-- from CCTS began our second course (INTC 5100) in pursuit of learning more about instructional design and applications as part of a Masters Degree program at The Richard Stockton College of New Jersey. Our professor Dr. Amy Ackerman got us started with visual introductions (pre-assesing what we knew and could do already), a tour of the course syllabus, requirements and expectations, and assignments for our next session. This Blog is part of the course expectations.
Today, I recreated the Introductory Wordle I had “dropped” during our first class and shared its embed link and a screenshot with my two groupmates. Hopefully, we’ll be able to use this one in our ePortfolio.
Then I went into my Google Alerts and set it up for “IT and instructional design.” I had also taken this step with our previous course, requesting alerts for “Web 2.0 Tools.” This strategy alone is quite helpful in directing my own informal day-to-day learning. I had also set up my Google Reader to feed me a manageable number of the blogs, wikis and so on that I had discovered to be helpful.
Today, in just seconds, I had 10 places to look. Within those 10, I quickly learned about Sreya Dutta, currently a senior curriculum developer at Oracle. Her blog is called “Instructional Design: On the Road to Learning.” Her Sunday, April 18, 2010 posting caught my attention because Dr. Ackerman had been talking in class about the balance between design and application. I’ll try to paraphrase Dr. Ackerman’s thinking: Applications change and evolve quickly but a strong and growing understanding of learners and how they best learn must under gird the entire eLearning process. Ms Dutta’s post is entitled “ID Research vs Application.”
I expect I'll soon discover how to publish and share this blog, the first I've ever written. That should illustrate why I call this place Instructional Design Infancy. Like Sreya Dutta, I'm a self-described "digital immigrant."
