Tuesday, May 19, 2015

Integrating Multimedia Components into the Traditional and Innovative Instructional Environment

Thursday, April 9, 2015-week1


                              Image result for pictures of people studying 
Distance Education Learning environments have developed significantly in the past decade.  Traditional distance education courses supported the textual presentation of knowledge with the rare inclusion of multimedia components.(Crawford, 2007 p:109).  After reading this journal article I see that technology is the fluid of today's learning this is something that we will always need and this is the way that it is going.  It has also stated in this article that instructional design within the learning environment; while, the learner-centered design and development practicum for teacher certification from a traditional, face to face delivery to an online presentation that combines the advantages of current multimedia with the advantages of more traditional tactics.(Crawford, 2007).
After reading this article it not only states that learning is about technology but it also states that sometimes you would have to think about the situation at hand and see what is the best way to handle the situation.  You have various different ways you can approach a situation and handle it the correct way just to name a few things: interactive activities, self-regulation, multimedia and podcast just to name a few.
This whole article talks overall about the distance education learning environment and what that means to me it touch on how education has improved over the years and the way it is looking now for the future.
With my current employer the position that I currently hold I have to put a lot of thinking into what I am doing and you have to sometimes come up with ideas on how to make the process minimize time and accuracy.  I am currently working on how to eliminate errors that are coming into our database without having a outside vendor to come in and do it for us.  With this project I have come up with all the necessary information that I would need to make this successful and I have already put it into place and it is working perfect.
Reference:
Crawford, Carolina M. (2007) Integrating Multimedia Components into the Traditional and Innovative Instructional Environment. International Journal of Book; Vol. 4 Issue 3, p109-119

Week 2
“If it is pointless to consider tailoring instruction to each individual student, it is equally misguided to imagine that a  single one-size fits-all approach to teaching  can meet the needs of every student” (Felder & Brent, 2005, p. 57).
Reflect on the required resources for Week 2 and your personal and professional experiences in relation to the points conveyed in the resources. Discuss how instructional design principles and theory influence the use of technology-enhanced instructional strategies to support the needs of all learners. Use additional resources in addition to those provided with Week 2 to support your evaluation.  Providing specific examples to illustrate your understanding of the question and incorporating opposing views to demonstrate critical thought is encouraged.
I found that this week’s video resources were very interesting, but they also bring up a very important point, one many educators and academic institutions are focusing on the order to bring a positive paradigm shift in education, particularly now that technology has become such a vital tool in teaching our students. As we enter further into the 21st century, we are beginning to understand that educating our students is a more complex process. It now asks of us to go further and realize that instructional design must take into account students as individuals with different learning styles, but above all things, it also asks of us to bring back the element of individual student creativity by allowing them to learn content through discovery. An interesting quote made by Ken Robinson in the TED Talks was “If you are not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original”. I think this described exactly what was wrong with traditional education and it’s no room for errors approach that chastised students for making a mistake, canceling their need to be creative.
Now schools are beginning to adopt more innovative methods of allowing students to explore their creativity and be educated through the use of technological tools that complement instructional designs that take into account the academic needs of individual learners.
Instructional design is the systematic development of instructional specifications using learning and instructional theory to ensure the quality of instruction.  It is the entire process of analysis of learning needs and goals and the development of an instructional system that meets those needs (Moallen, 2001). These are guidelines or sets of strategies, which are based on learning theories and best practices.
Instructional designs that integrate this principle lead to many opportunities for providing individual learners the necessary tools to learn by complementing their unique learning style.  Some of these learning styles can be managed through different methods such as:Active Learning which is a strategy for education in which students take personal responsibility for how and what they learn by becoming involved in learning rather than being audiences for instruction. Teachers create an active learning situation by assigning a complex topic and helping the students to identify the resources they need to investigate it (Little wound School, 2013)..
Cooperative Learning is also an excellent way to engage students in social learning.  It is a strategy for education in which students work in groups to achieve shared goals. When students are engaged in cooperative learning; they work together to learn information and skills, to formulate concepts, to build products, or to refine ideas. Teachers create cooperative learning environments by establishing groups, helping students to determine group goals, and teaching students cooperative learning skills (Little wound School, 2013). Students can use technologies like PowerPoint to create presentations together or even use wikis or blogs were each has access and are able to edit and create content in collaboration.

References:
Little Wound School (2013). Learning Styles and Technology; Little Wound School. Retrieved on April 8, 2015 from http://www.littlewound
Moallem, M. PhD. (2001). Applying Constructivist and Objectivist Learning Theories in the Design of A Web-Based Course: Implications for Practice; University of North Carolina at Wilmington. Retrieved on April 8, 2015  http://www.ifets.info/journals/4_3/moallem.html

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Week 3 Ethical Practices of Technology Usage
Wanda Williams
                                                   April 27, 2015
EDU697 Capstone
Dr. Valley
 


Ethical Practices of Technology Usage

 

            When using technology as a part of a lesson, a teacher must strive to use ethical practices in order to ensure that all students are being treated fairly and are safe. The Ashford University Program Learning Outcome 5 is to “exemplify ethical practices of technology usage.”  It is vital that all students in the Masters in Teaching and Learning with Technology program (MATLT) achieve this objective in order to ensure that their technology use is appropriate, fair and safe.  As Lin (2007stated, there are several methods that all teachers should employ to ensure that they are developing technology use strategies that are ethical. My paper will cover a revision of a previous assignment that incorporates the use of Learning Objective 5 to show ethical practices in technology use.

 

Original Assignment

 

A classroom blog was created and published at http://wandawilliams.edublogs.org.  The topic of the blog is world history and American Civilization, and the audience is senior history students.  The purpose of the blog is to create interaction between the students and teacher by providing students with a reminder about their upcoming assignments. Students will also be able to use the blog to make comments or post questions for the teacher. The goal of this blog is to provide a simple but full explanation of what the students are being expected to accomplish is a simple and easy to read fashion.  Students can also find links to useful websites about world history and American Civilization. The site has the appropriate information while being simple and easy to follow.

 

            It was important that the blog be simple in format and provides clear and concise writing.  Students should be able to find a clear explanation of their upcoming assignments, should have no trouble finding a clear and concise list of upcoming tests and projects. The site is easily accessible for any modern computer use the articles and links are easy to locate and navigate to.  The addition of graphics to the site could provide the educator to address the learning needs of all students and provide a greater lever of understanding of topics.

 

            I found this process fun at first, but it soon became frustrating.    Even when reading the help available through the site, I was not able to find out what I was doing wrong.  The initial information such as posting the articles for the students was exciting.  I felt as if I was creating something that I would actually use in my own classroom.  However, when I tried to add more content to the site in the form of graphics and wikis, I started to feel overwhelmed. 

 

Revised Assignment

 

            This assignment involved the creation of a classroom blog that students could access at any time.  The blog would contain information about class assignments and would provide links to outside web sources.  In addition, the intent was to include a link to a classroom wiki where students could participate in class discussions together outside of the classroom.  I found that using edublogs was difficult, and I have since practiced creating blogs on this website as well as on blogspot.  Blogs and wikis have tremendous potential to increase learning as long as they are used appropriately (Heilferty, 2011; Times Higher Education, 2011).  This lesson was missing one major element, an explanation of ethical guidelines and principles.

 

As Heilferty (2011) reports, people often fail to realize that the information they post to online forums such as blogs is going to be read by others, sometimes by many others in addition, Times Higher Education (2011) reports that even private, classroom blogs and wikis can be hacked, so students need to be aware that any information they post to these social networking sites is not too personal or embarrassing. 

 

This assignment prepared for HIS103 should include the following information that will be printed in the classroom syllabus, given to students before the assignment begins, and reprinted on the classroom blog and wiki sites:

 

Classroom lectures, discussions and all participation on websites are considered private and are not to be shared with any person outside of the class without the teacher’s express permission. Students should have the expectation that any words spoken or written in the course of completing work for this class will be read or heard only by those in the class. In addition, students should not give access to classroom internet forums to any person outside of the class.  This protects the students who could be harmed if someone else reads their comments.  The school has an obligation to protect students from outside sources, and permitting unauthorized personnel to access the site is forbidden because the school is open to inappropriate comments and behaviors on the part of individuals who are not permitted to have access to the site. 

 

Written communication through the online blog and wiki will be vital components of the coursework.  Students are expected to be encouraging and helpful to other students, especially those who ask for assistance or seem to be struggling.  Students will be made aware that written communication can be taken differently than verbal communication.  Students need to use words carefully and reread all comments to interpret whether they would be considered insulting, disrespectful, discriminating or rude by another student.  If the answer to any of these questions is yes, the student needs to rethink the phrasing of the comment and rethink the comment all together if necessary.    In order for all students to get the most out of this educational experience, every student needs to conduct themselves with mature and respectable behavior, and any violations of the above policies will be dealt with by the teacher as well as the principal and the student’s parents if the situation calls for it. 

 

Challenges & Conclusion

 

            This assignment was the most challenging one so far because it was difficult to identify an appropriate assignment to revise because it was difficult to see how ethics needed to be built into the lesson itself.  After much thought, I realized that any online work required an ethics and behavior code that should be communicated before the start of the class.  Online forums give the writers a sense of anonymity, even if the class knows who is writing the material because of logins.  You need to understand that there are ethical issues associated with sharing the information they see or hear from classmates, and that in order to protect all students, classroom lessons will be considered confidential.  Use of technology in classrooms requires some ethical considerations because there are issues related to technology usage that are of special concern in a classroom setting. 

 

References

 

Heilferty, C.M.  (2011). Ethical considerations in the study of online illness narratives:  A qualitative review.  Journal of Advanced Nursing, 67(5), 945-953.

 

Lin, H. (2007). The ethics of instructional technology: issues and coping strategies experienced by professional technologists in design and training situations in higher education. Educational Technology Research and Development, 55, 411-437. Retrieved from http://edweb.sdsu.edu/courses/ed690mb/ethics.pdf.

 

Newby, T. J., Stepich, D. A., Lehman, J. D., Russell, J. D., & Ottenbreit-Leftwich, A. (2011). Educational technology for teaching and learning (4th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc.

Week 4



 For this discussion I have chosen to do option 2:  
I have chosen to write about what happened to my nephew while he was in 10th grade (I was not in this degree program as of yet but I knew that there was issues and figured out how to address them).  I think it is a good example of technology and ethics.  In his history class a wikispace was set up for the students to do a project on WWII.  There were a discussion board where the students answer a question put forth by the teacher and that’s where it got ugly for some of the students. 
Here is the Scenario it was brought to my attention by my nephew to me.
Nephew: "Auntie, can I show you something?"

Me: "Sure"

Nephew: “Here is my wikispace that I need to do homework on...each day we have to answer a question about something on WWII."

Me: “Okay?"

Nephew: “Will you read the comments on here and tell me what to do? I don't think they are good...I think it is cyber bulling against student s."

And after reading all of the comments I realized he was right. The first thing that I wanted to do was look for rules to see how to approach this situation and then present it to my nephew.
After researching and from just starting college I see that Ashford had something that was called “netiquette" but did not see anything of the sort on the wikispace itself. The next thing I did was talk to my nephew about it explaining to him what netiquette means. So our conversation proceeded after I was able to look up some information.
ME: "I really think that you need to talk to your teacher about this."
Nephew: "And say what?"
ME: “What it is, cyber bullying."
Nephew: “Will you come with me."
ME: “Okay, I guess I can do that."

The next day my nephew told me that the teacher was willing to talk to us about the problem she had with the wikispace. I started the conversation like this...
ME: "Mrs. Jackson, my nephew has brought something to my attention that I think should be looked at and quickly. Will you look at the wikispace that you put together and we will explain what we are talking about?"

Teacher: "Sure, how is that space working out for you Jason, do you like being able to collaborate with other students outside of the classroom?"

Nephew: "I did until I started to see what was being said"

Teacher: "What??"

As we looked at the comments and I talked to her more I realized that she was new to wikispace and didn't even consider the fact that she could actually see the comments, she was just looking at the activity monitor to make sure all students were participating. Plus, she hadn't even considered that she needed to set rules...she stated that she had thought that all the students would "know better" than that.

At that time I wasn't sure how to even consider talking to her about it at her level...I wasn't a teacher and thought better of it because I wasn't an expert on the issue. She agreed that there would be rules set up, that the students that were responsible for the bullying would be held accountable and that she would get with another teacher who knew how to work wikispace so she could learn.

What do I know now? I will tell you what I know now.
I know now that yes there are real risks using technology in the classroom but if used correctly it can be of great use!

I also know now that she was using the wikispace to make sure that the constructivism theory was being applied in her lesson...good for her but with her lack of attention to the ethical part of using technology to have collaboration present she hurt a student and with that said, it is very important to.
 1). Make sure you know how to use the technology first.
2). Have rules!
3). Monitor all the time. If these things are done the safe environment that students need to have to learn will be there and the technology itself will lend that helping hand!




Week 4


Instructional design principles and theory greatly influence the evaluation of technology resources to facilitate effective assessment and evaluation. This influence can be seen in a number of ways. According to Bedard-Voorhees, Johnson, & Dobson (2011), one way is by the allowance of teachers/instructors selecting appropriate technology which will allow students to demonstrate knowledge attained. Instructional design principles and theory help by allowing teachers to meet the needs of individual students with differentiating lesson plans and helping students personalize their learning by means of variance in technology resources.
These principles require teachers use insight and proper judgment when evaluating technology to make sure it fits the needs of the students and the students are comfortable with the usage of the chosen technology device (School One, n.d.). Teachers have to consider the best type of delivery (self-instruction, computer-based, etc) that will meet the individual student’s needs. The Instructional design principles and theories of Objectivism/Behaviorism and Cognitivism/Pragmatism influence the technology tool chosen as teachers determine what is the best technology tool which will actively engage the student and allow teacher observation to guide and enhance the student's learning potential (Dabbagh, 2006). For example, instructional design principles allow teachers to adapt the lesson plan by incorporating "computer-based and learning embedded formative assessments that dynamically identify student needs to immediately impact instruction" to allow learners to set their own pace of knowledge attainment (Wolf, PhD, 2010, p. 27). The theories and principles of instructional design pave the way for teachers to recognize the potential technology holds in making their jobs easier and providing more rewarding outcomes with knowledge acquisition and retention.
In addition, allowing learners to set their own pace is directly related to the constructivism principle of allowing the student to learn by means of direct interaction (Dabbagh, 2006). Once teachers are aware of the principles and theories, they can use them as a checklist in searching for the appropriate technology tool to meet the criteria outlined in the principles/theories’ objectives.  Therefore, the principles and theories of instructional design lay the foundation for teachers to choose the appropriate method of technology for proper assessment measures to attain the desired learning outcome(s).
In reflecting back on prior experience with my own child, I have come to appreciate the difference in the learning style of my son. I have personally had to seek out alternate methods of engagement when the standard book and paper format did not meet the learning outcome desired. For example, one of my sons learns best by following the instructions provided and being given examples to work with and he is able to go from there and complete his assignments. Therefore, I have utilized many online interactive tools through various websites to help engage him in his learning experience and keep him focused on his lesson. My son uses the scanner to upload his work and save to his computer and display in his videos. The difference in the learning styles of my son has caused me to appreciate the need to continue to research additional technology tools to help him enhance his learning experience. I firmly believe that one size does NOT fit all learners and seek out ways to make my son feel he is valued for his uniqueness.
References
Bedard-Voorhees, A., Johnson, L.M., & Dobson, P. (2011). Letting them show what they know: Digital assessment strategies [Book Submission Chapter Final Version]. In S. Hirtz and K. Kelly (Eds.) Education for a Digital World 2.0, Section F: eAssessment: Measuring in Ways that Matter. British Columbia: Province of British Columbia.
Dabbagh, N. (2006). Instructional design knowledge base. Retrieved from http://classweb.gmu.edu/ndabbagh/Resources/IDKB/models_theories.html
School One (n.d.). Retrieved from http://school-one.org/

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Week 5
Instructional design principles and theory influence the ability to make informed decisions regarding the use of technology in support of learning and, especially, leadership by providing a process or guidance by way of models which take instructors step by step in the process of analyzing technology to fit the learner(s) and the intended learning outcome(s). These principles are like a blueprint for educators in showing them just how to utilize technology as a tool to build an adequate and exceptional lesson plan curtailed to individual student needs.
 
For example, the Constructivist principles/theories help educators to understand that students need to have an environment where they can learn to cooperate/socialize to solve problems. This provides the guidance for seeking out technology which allows collaboration to achieve the learning outcome. Furthermore, it also encourages the use of technology which will allow the learner to have real world experiences which can help them to grow such as technology which allows simulation practices.  Instructional design principles and theories, such as the Constructivist principle, allows for educators to reinvent learning by analyzing what works best for the learner (Edge, 2012).  Many tend to disagree in thinking that we live in a world with too much technology and that it can only spell doom for our children. However, we can sit back and analyze this for a moment. 
Children use technology everyday whether they are talking on cell phones, text messaging, or engaging in social media chat. Instructional design principles simply say that educators observe what it is that captures their audience (students) and use this in a productive manner to engage them into learning. This is no easy feat as it requires skill to restructure something meant for entertainment to make it appealing in the learning platform. This, in fact, is creativity at its best. I have used this observation with my own children in seeing what works best for each and using it to design their learning experience. For example, both of my children like to watch videos and play games. I use this observation to find a technology means, such as the computer, to allow them to play games and watch videos that have learning embedded in the design. I also encourage them to use this same format to create videos to demonstrate their learning. They call it fun while I am thrilled that they are actively learning while having fun. Therefore, in a nutshell, Instructional Design principles and theories are nothing short of sure genius in using observation to manipulate technology to serve in an educational capacity to reach even the most unwilling or difficult learners. 
 Reference
Edge (2012, September 9). Reinventing society in the wake of big data. Retrieved from Edge: http://www.edge.org/conversation/reinventing-society-in-the-wake-of-big-data

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