Ch. 31 Reflection

The part of the chapter that I found to be very interesting was the section discussing artificial intelligence. I am amazed that eventually people will have the capabilities to program a computer to have the intelligence comparable to a human. For a computer to be able to tell how much a student is actually learning, how much they are relying on the helps available and how to problem solve while 'teaching' boggles my mind. It's truly amazing to think that it's possible this could be happening within the next decade. I must admit I'm not sure how I feel about this however. I don't know if this is truly the best thing for our society. I think that computerized training programs are great, but to have computers replace tutors for a large percentage of the time worries me a little bit. I feel there are so many people that are already struggling to relate to people because of the crutch they have by relating through a computer. Taking away one more human interaction time could be detrimental. I could be wrong, but those are simply some speculations. I'm sure it will have it's advantages as well.

My favorite activity that we did this semester was probably playing with the photo editing sites. I really love pictures and playing around with them was something I really enjoyed. It was fun to try some new things and to see how I could make things different with some photos and try to capture some different lighting, moods, and emotions by doing so. It may not have been the most beneficial for my professional use, but I really enjoyed using it. I also found learning how to use Delicious was very beneficial. It's so nice to have my favorites bookmarked on a site I can access on any computer. I've really learned a lot this semester.

Week 12 Reading Reflection

I really found the reading this week to be very interesting. I think one thing that I will take away from this is the need to reflect on what teaching methods I am using and how effective they really are. For example, being that I work with students with autism, they do not do well with a lot of external stimulus. They are very visual learners, relying a lot on pictures and visual representation of nearly everything. That being said, if I were to create a training module to teach them something on the computer I would definitely leave out any background music and limit the auditory instruction to a minimum, making sure the visuals are clear and precise. If it is done properly there will be less information for them to process and they will be able to focus on the important pieces of information.
Another thing that I can take away from this reading to the professional field is to remember to consider the prior knowledge of students when designing a lesson. This was something that was drilled into our heads in my undergraduate classes, always be sure to assess prior knowledge at the beginning of a lesson, but I think that sometimes I tend to forget this and plow forward with whatever I was going to teach. It can make a big difference on what information I want to teach, whether or not they have something to connect the new information to and what style to present the information to. If they have some prior knowledge of a subject it will be easier for them to process this new information and I can go a little deeper with the lesson, rather than building new information so that they can connect it to something in the future.
While this chapter was a little complex, it was very interesting and valuable information, something I can keep in mind for the future.

Online Tools Review

Office Suite Application: Zoho Writer
I tested out the Zoho Writer. I found this to be very comprable to Microsoft Word and even has some perks that Microsoft does not have. One perk is that you are able to save your documents online or offline so that you are able to access your documents from any computer. Another benefit to this is that you can share your documents with co-workers by making them public. It includes almost all of the formatting features of Microsoft Word, although there are fewer font choices and does not include clip art. I also really like the fact that you are able to access all features on one menu without any searching and that you can post documents to your blog. I think that this application is very user friendly and makes a good substitute for Microsoft.


Photo Editing Application: FotoFlexer
I had a lot of fun playing around with FotoFlexer. They have so many different settings and things you can do to edit your pictures, such as adding animations, borders and text. Of course you can do the basic editing like cropping, resizing, red eye reduction and use other similar tools. One thing I really enjoyed was that you can edit photos from other websites such as Facebook, MySpace and Flickr as well as photos saved on your computer. It also makes it easy to share photos that you have edited through email or posting onto a website. There is a description of all the tools on the homepage as well as a demo that you can watch to explain how each tool works. Another easy to use application that I would highly recommend using. It was a lot of fun and easy to use.

Classroom Website

I made a website for my classroom, something I think is very valuable for teachers to have now. It's a great way to keep parents informed of what's going on and other important updates they may need to know. I included a calendar with important dates that are coming up. I also included a place for weekly updates. Eventually I will make a page that keeps a backlog of previous updates in case parents want to go back and read old entries. I also put a place for announcements. This will hopefully negate the need to send notes home so often and will save paper. Also, I included a page with pictures of things going on in our classroom so that parents can have a better idea of some of the things we are doing. It was a lot of fun to make and I hope that I can continue to keep it up.
This is my site.

Reflections on Competencies

As professionals we should always be looking for ways to improve because I don't believe the status of perfection can ever be achieved. Being fairly new in the teaching profession there are still a great number of areas that I want to improve upon. I took a look at the competencies for the instructor because it is most closely related to the areas I am looking to improve upon.
One area that I wanted to improve on is preparing for instruction, improve the organization. There are so many days where I feel like I am running around at the last minute trying to get things ready for what is coming next in our day. I want to work on being more prepared and having things organized so that the day will run more smoothly and I will feel more in control of what is going on. Despite the fact of having limited planning time and no real curriculum to work from, there are ways to get around this and be prepared.
Another area that I am looking to improve upon is to promoting the transfer of knowledge and skills. Working with special education students, the generalization of knowledge is something that is extremely difficult for them, but also very important. I need to work on teaching them functional skills inside the classroom and then reteach the information outside of the classroom so that they are able to directly see how these skills can be used in 'the real world.'
The final area of competency that I want to work on is assessing learning and performance. I think that so often I am more worried about pushing on to the next activity that I don't always stop to assess how the students are doing with the material being taught. I need to get better about modifying instruction on things that may have been confusing and not be afraid to go back and re-teach. If it is important enough to be taught, then I should be doing my best to help all students understand.

Of course there are many other areas that I want to improve upon, but these are three of the major areas.

Screencast

For my screencast I gave an example of an assignment I would give to my students after having read the book Bud Not Buddy. It includes how to insert a table to compare and contrast two characters from the book as well as a hyperlink to the website where they got information from and a picture to illustrate the book they read. If experienced in Microsoft Word it is not a difficult task, but for elementary students, this is a task they may not be familiar with.

Putting It All Together

After completing the reading of the third chapter in this series I found a couple commonalities. The first major commonality that I noticed was the importance of teamwork. In Chapter 18 it goes into great detail discussing the roles that instructional designers play as a team member. In Chapter 21 it talks a lot about the role that a team plays when trying to implement a change in a school system. Finally, in Chapter 22 the various professors talk about the role that team plays when deciding tenure for professors as well as in faculty development. Teamwork is important in many different professional fields, but I feel that it is especially important in this field. One of the main roles that instructional designers is to improve the education of our children and to improve how businesses are facilitated, and it is my strong opinion that this is much more thoroughly done by a group of people rather than by a single individual. There are more ideas on the table and the load is not being carried by one person. Also, ideally, with a group of people the change will be made or the task will be completed more efficiently and quickly. Not only that, but with a team, there is a lot more accountability involved.

Another major commonlity that I noticed was making changes in the respective fields. I thought that this was very appropriate seeing as how technology is always changing, that this field would be constantly looking for ways to change and better the way things are done now. In the coporate setting they are looking for ways to run their businesses more efficiently. Obviously in education they are always looking for ways to improve (i.e. improve teaching styles and more effective integration of technology.) Instructional designers play a large role in all of these areas, holding trainings and workshops and serving as members of teams to help facilitate all of these changes.

It was interesting to see it all come together and see how the instructional design component can be a bridge across these different fields. I never realized before what an important role they play.