Friday, February 25, 2011

Chapter 18 discusses instructional design in business and industry. Give an example of rapid prototyping and discuss how this could be used in education.

One of my favorite places to visit is Las Vegas.  I started going to Vegas when I was 21 and I try to go back every three years.  Every time I visit I see model of future hotels.  These models prototypes are detail and show you how the hotel will look and details about the layout of the hotel.  If you go to the certain website they company will lay out most of the detail so an investor will know what he is getting into if he wanted to invest in a property in Las Vegas.   The developers show everything on a small scale so future problems can be worked out before money and time is invested in the real thing. 




In education we have to look at the bigger picture sometimes and know where problems can occur in the future.  For example as teachers we have to look at today student’s and know that they live in a world that is rapidly changing and very technical.  We have to gear our lesson plans for the 21 century and embrace the change and try to think how we can make our lessons interesting for someone who is use to seeing change in technology.  One example I have tried to do is cell phones in the classrooms.  Games such as text me the right answer, or use your cell phone app for a powerpoint, can make a teacher have a connection with a generation has always had the internet.




Chapter 19 discusses instructional design opportunities in military education and training environments. I had the opportunity to work two summers in Orlando on a faculty fellowship in the advanced distributed learning lab (ADL) discussed in the book and saw first hand some of the constraints placed on some of the tools that could be used for learning. Pretend you are hired as a consultant for the military. They want to use technology in its training, but electronic access is not always available. Using the Full Spectrum diagram, what alternatives could you suggest for a successful program?
My first step would be to know my audience.  Since the majority of people in the military are under the age of 30 with at least a high school diploma I would use the technical tool they know best, the cell phone.  I first would train everyone to use a type of smartphone with hard drive for storage so people would know how to download information.  This can be done in a classroom in basic training and to troops around the world.   If I needed to train a particular unit, I could download the training to their cell phones or upload it to their cell phones. The particular type of training could be downloaded to a person phone through the internet or through a transfer with a computer just in case electronic internet access is not available.  Also could be printed out very fast without internet for hard copy.   Training can be show to troops around the world through the use of video and audio capabilities of the phone. 

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AOpomu9V6Q&feature=feedf
Chapter 21 looks at radical educational change in P-12 settings. I visited the Chugach School District in Alaska and know Richard DeLorenzo very well. I can assure you that this change can occur in our schools. Review the Step-Up-To-Excellence methodology and the GSTE. Outline a staff development activity that will introduce both methodologies to your colleagues. 
I would split groups up in my school in two 4 groups.  Groups would consist of different department members, such as 1 administrator to a group with a teacher representative from social studies, science, math, English, electives and support staff.  Two groups would handle covering GSTE while the other two groups would have step-up-to-excellence.  Group would have 2-3 hours to work together to explain the concept to the whole group.  They could use roleplaying, make videos, or do powerpoint or prezi as long as activity was information and fun.  I would have prizes for most informative group and best group concept so that the competition would help teacher and staff to learn the concepts while having a good time.    


Navigating through the ranks of a faculty member in higher education can be tricky. A good institution has support for its faculty and provides faculty development opportunities to grow and learn. Research three different university offices for faculty development. Answer the following questions for each office:
What are the different names used for faculty development?
What division is it under?
What services does it offer?
How often are programs given and what specifically are they?
Eastern Illinois University (http://www.eiu.edu/~facdev/)

The Faculty Development office directly reports to the Vice President for Academic Affairs
The central mission of Faculty Development at Eastern Illinois University is to develop and enable excellent faculty to provide high quality service and leadership across the University's integrated missions of teaching, research, scholarship and creative activities. The aim is to promote overall faculty excellence, morale, and collegiality and to facilitate superior and timely responses to changing external and internal circumstances and priorities.
Beginning Friday, Jan. 28, the Center for Translational Humanities and the Office of Faculty Development, in conjunction with Booth Library, will be sponsoring a monthly interdisciplinary lunchtime meeting for any interested faculty
Faculty Development & Diversity
The Faculty Development & Diversity Office, led by Vice Provost for Faculty Development & Diversity Karen Cook and Associate Vice Provost Jacyn Lewis
Supports the faculty through a variety of programs and information resources. Included are orientation and informational events, resources for new and junior faculty, workshops for department chairs and deans, and initiatives supporting faculty diversity.
Distinguished Alumni Scholars Day was established in 2006 as an institutional response to the scarce presence of diverse racial/ethnic group members within the faculty ranks of our nation’s colleges and universities, and within the Ph.D. programs that produce these faculty. The purpose of this (now) biennial program is to bring Stanford students from cultural groups underrepresented in academia into contact and discussion with distinguished alumni scholars from a broad range of backgrounds, disciplines and institutional types to inspire new generations of students to consider academia as a career. The program's success in its early years resulted in its two-fold expansion in 2008 from 9 to 19 scholars and a broadened programmatic focus the same year to include women in science, engineering and math (STEM) disciplines. The current 2010 program enlarges the scope further to include scholars from biomedical disciplines.
UC Davis School of medicine (http://www.ucdmc.ucdavis.edu/facultydev/)
Faculty Forward
The Faculty Development Program is a coordinated and centralized effort administered through the Dean's Office.
The Faculty Development Program strives to align university resources around faculty recruitment, retention and development
Workshops and other activities
February
03  Breakfast with the Dean
08  Workshop: Putting Together Your Academic Packet
11  Mental Models (JCLP)
23  Workshop: Family-Friendly and Career Flexibility Policies
March
01  Dean’s Recognition Reception
11  Leadership and Management Skills: Using the Myers-Briggs Personality Type Indicator to Your Advantage (JCLP)
17  Workshop: How to Give Effective Feedback
31  Workshop: Faculty Merits, Promotions and Tenure
April
08  Negotiation Skills (JCLP)
14   Workshop: HSCP Faculty Promotions Process
Event co-sponsor
JCLP:  Junior Career Leadership Program






Friday, February 18, 2011

Section 4: Human Performance Technology

Chapter 14 discusses the concept of the evolution of human performance improvement. Several sections of chapter 14 present a variety of non-instructional solutions to performance problems. Identify a performance problem in your area of work and provide a non-instructional solution to solve the problem. 
Performance Problem is higher math scores from students
Students in my school need to improve math scores so that the school will be a recognized school.  Last year we missed recognized because of a few points on the math test.  The teachers and administrative staff got together and started a program called Fun Friday to enhance students’ motivation to pass the TAKS test and common assessments.  Every 6 weeks student who pass their common assessment in TAKs tested area are allowed to go do fun activities such as video games, dancing and sports for a full two hours during school.  The student love that they are allowed to move to different classrooms to participate in all the fun activities.  If students failed any section of the Common Assessment they have to attend tutoring with teacher during the fun Friday.  This has helped motivate students to want to do better and increased common assessment scores for our school.  Our school has had the highest common assessments scores this year due to the success of this program.   This program has help students to stay focus on passing TAKS and stay motivated to do better on TAKS this year. 
 






Chapter 15 presents several definitions of electronic performance support systems. In addition to these definitions, locate a few more and indicate your preference explaining why you prefer it. Additionally, describe why you believe EPSS have not been widely used and if they are more likely be become more prevalent in the future.
An Electronic Performance Support System, is any computer software program or component that improves user performance from Wikepedia
An Electronic Performance Support System is, according to Barry Raybould, "a computer-based system that improves worker productivity by providing on-the-job access to integrated information, advice, and learning experiences" (Raybould, 1991).
Gloria Gery defines it as "an integrated electronic environment that is available to and easily accessible by each employee and is structured to provide immediate, individualized on-line access to the full range of information, software, guidance, advice and assistance, data, images, tools, and assessment and monitoring systems to permit job performance with minimal support and intervention by others." (Gery, 1989).
EPSS are primarily applicable in the workplace to promote learning and offer immediate performance guidance” (Ahmad, 2009, p. 8).
An Electronic Performance Support System (EPSS) is one method of supplying online support to people who use computer systems.
I believe the best explanation of why EPSS has not been use more has been fear of older workers to use technology. The fear of something new even if it is better can slow down a business or a school progress.  Business will not invest in something they feel their employees with not use or want.  With older workers, most do not want to be taught by a computer, and most resort to the older way of the tried and true way of training.  In the future as more workers are more tech savvy and are not afraid of new technology, EPSS will have a greater presence in the workplace.  I also feel that EPSS will become more interesting with better training guides that feature music and video to help employees to understand their job better and make their job easier.  I see ESPP as hurting employees because they can get lazy if everything is just one click away.  Also can hurt creativity from some employees who like to think outside the box for solutions to problems.















Knowledge management is the way we manage information, share that information, and use it. Organizations, such as schools, are full of information/data and we must organize that data in a way that we can make sense of it. We use data to make decisions and good data=good decision making. Identify a real or hypothetical problem in your line of work. How might a blended learning approach, including the use of a knowledge management system, be use to solve the problem? 
A problem at our school is that our economic disadvantage student test scores are not as high as our regular students. 
A blended learning approach can work for these economic disadvantage students by having students to use a computer program to show areas of weakness in the different subject areas.  While teachers can now focus in on skill that student are lacking in specialty tutoring sessions for the students.  Student can then go back to the computer to see if they have master the information that the teacher has taught or if more tutoring is needed for the students.  Teachers can work with this data to focus in on weak areas for a class and for selected students.  This will help students to see progress from a real source and help them with their own motivation to success in the classroom.  Students will also build a better bond with teachers and be less of a trouble maker due to updated data, so children can never get behind in certain subjects.  The student will also like the fact that their teacher understand their problems and is helping them to overcome their problems in subject and topics they need.






Describe the types of informal learning you have been exposed to in your adult life. What was the purpose? What was the experience like? Was it engaging? Social? What role did you play? What role did the instructor play? 
Two years ago, I took an educator tour of the Egyptian exhibit at the Dallas Museum of Art.  The purpose was to show teacher the exhibit so that they would bring students the museum.  The experience was very amazing, I felt like I was a part of something special and was bless to see artifact that were over 3000 years old.  The exhibit had most teacher captivated because of the layout of the exhibit.  Piece of the artifact were all place in different themed rooms with interesting facts about Egypt posted though out the exhibit.  Teacher who had never met before the show, talked with each other about what we like and did not like about the exhibit.   My role was that of a student who learned a lot as the tour guide gave interesting fact about the different artifacts.  The instructor was a helpful guide that answered questions they could not have been answer through the material the museum provided to the teachers. 








Friday, February 11, 2011

Section 3: Evaluating, Implementing and Managing Instructional Programs and Projects

 The model I chose were Landamatics and the ASSURE model

Landamatics
 Landamatic is concern with learning objectives and aimed at providing detailed guidelines for developing an educational activity. Lev Landa’s theory is concerned with teaching and learning cognitive strategies or methods, and its main idea is analyzing an expert’s way of solving a problem or performing a procedure, breaking it down to units and configures an instructional unit. For example you would teach a lesson by parts, you will teach students how experts use their learning skills.  For example if you are teaching history, you would teach students to get information as a reporter by using a flowchart to break down questions they may ask historical characters.   I would go over and practice how reporters ask and research their topics for interviews.  Students would have no problems or fears interviewing the historical figures it would be second nature to them.
Landamatic is extremely formal and takes a strong epistemological perspective on the nature of cognitive strategies and procedures. It starts with solving problem means that you have to teach students to look at the problem from an expert standpoint. 





ASSURE
Developed by R. Heinich, M. Molenda and J. Russel (1993), the ASSURE model is an update version of the ADDIE general model. Although they are now six and not exactly corresponding to ADDIE’s five, ASSURE also presents design phases, and shares with it the two main features: the initial focus on analysis and the cyclic structure.
The peculiar feature of this model is that it is focused on “planning and conducting instruction that incorporates media” (Heinich, Molenda & Russel 1993, p.31) – its main perspective is on how to integrate media, any kind of media, into instruction in a proper and effective way in terms of learning outcomes. The ASSURE model incorporates Robert Gagne's events of instruction to assure effective use of media in instruction.  I would use this in a lesson on Factory workers in the early 1800’s. I would figure out what students would and could learn by analyze my students.   I would have look at TAKS objectives for a goal.  Then I would use a variety to media material such as power points, computer games, or video files.  I would require students to be engage and then evaluate and revise if student did not show that they learned the required information. 
ASSURE is also an acronym, and stands for
- Analyze Learners
- State Objectives
- Selects Methods, Media and Materials
- Utilize Media and Materials
- Require Learner Participation
- Evaluate and Revise





Think about a technological innovation within your social system that was recently introduced (social system = place of work, home, etc.). Any innovation has what is known as perceived attributes - relative advantage, compatibility, complexity, trialability, and observability. Describe these attributes of the innovation and which of the attributes assisted and/or hindered adoption of the innovation. For example, was it not compatible with the existing beliefs of the system or was it overly complex to use or understand?
At our school this year we have started to use C-Scope for curriculum.  C-Scope was explained to us in a district meeting as a way for us to all be on the same page in terms of where our progress should be in our subject.  Students would no longer need to have to worry about transferring to different schools because everyone would be on the same page if they were using C-scope.  Lesson would be provided for us, and we would have all the material we needed from C-Scope.  The district was in love with the program and ensure the teacher that we would love it too.



When we first started to use C-Scope teachers saw problems with it from the start.  It was not always compatible with true learning, it seem focused on TAKS information only .   The powerpoints and worksheets were very uninteresting to students and teachers alike.  It was also not received well from teachers due to the fact that it was forced on us without any teacher input.   The district basically said to use this software, while teachers have basically been ignoring C-Scope.    Some first year teachers have use to software because they have nothing else but most teachers in our district are not using this software.




Chapter's 12 & 13 focus on project management and how to manage projects when resources are scarce. You have been assigned to develop a series of professional development sessions focusing on technology use in the classroom for teachers. How will you use Situational Leadership to facilitate this project?

1.       First I would take control of the teachers that I need to train by using direct detailed instructions.  I would be very friendly maybe even cracking a few jokes to help relax teachers who may have some apprehension to the session.  This way people would be at ease to know that I am confident in my knowledge of the subject matter and that they know the training will be fun learning experience. 

2.       Next I would explain the concepts and procedures better and reward teachers who understand concepts and who are following directions.  This way questions can be answered for a true goal of total understand of concept.  Also teachers will work harder with see reward given to individuals and group that are excelling.

3.       Now I will focus on making sure that groups are being self-reliant and understand concepts as a monitor the group to make sure that anyone does not need help in learning.

4.       Now I will step back and let the teachers show what they have learned from the training.




Friday, February 4, 2011

Benefits of engaging in design research

I helps you to design a great lesson that will befit both the teacher and the student due to the time and effort from the teacher.  Students will feel that they are truly learning and look forward to coming to your class.  This will lead to a environment where learning is not only expected but also fun so student will look forward to participating in your class and become life long learners.

ARCS model subcategories

You have been hired to design a course for a topic in your area of specialization. Using Table 9.2 as a template, what would you incorporate into each subcategory to motivate learners?
Lesson on 49ers in California

Attention
Perceptual Arousal  I would capture their interest with a San Francisco 49er helmet on the presentation
station Projector.


Inquiry Arousal  I would then ask student to figure out why do I have a football helmet on the projector.

Variability I would then bring a real 49ers helmet or show a poster for the gold rush to california.  I would try to use varity of ways to show each learning style maybe even sing so sheet music about the rush.

Relevance
Goal Orientation My being creative and teaching more than one learning style I can reach my students need also by adjusting teaching style by grades from my students.

Motive Matching My make sure that I am teaching not only to the TEKS but also to student higher level thinking skills.

Familiarity By showing student material and things that they know and like.  For example you can have students think of all the things that are made of gold and show how it is still use today.


Confidence
Learning Requirements By showing confidence and making sure that it is interesting and challenging lesson.

Success Opportunities By giving students many opportunity to be successful student want to continue to do more because they know that they will achieve.

Personal Control By having a clear define objective and by having easy to follow rules and procedures for learning.  Teacher must stick by these rules and procedures as well.

Satisfaction

Intrinsic Reinforcement By having students to create projects or use their skills in the outside world.

Extrinsic Rewards A grade that is not inflated but meanful with comments.

Equity By showing true interest in their work.