Instructional Design Infancy

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Instructional Design Destinations

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.

Friday, July 9, 2010

Good News; Bad News

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."