AHA moments and more.

Let this post be a collection of thoughts that have been scattered and gathered throughout the semester. What were some of my "AHA" moments? The concept that learning theory is all about the learner and really has little to do with the teacher's method of choice. It's preparing for a class by thinking "How can my students best learn this concept?" rather than "How do I want to teach this concept?" Another AHA moment is about the bells and whistles of technology. It is still yet to be proven that technology raises student achievement. Technology can help engage the learner and thus support learning, but modes of technology can become as routine as a pencil, paper, and calculator in my field and it really does come down to assessing student understanding at the core. These are just a few insightful learning moments. Obviously most of my learning was more than an AHA experience. Rather it has been an accumulation of gradual understanding about how the instructional design process works. It all comes back to our first friend in instructional design - ADDIE.

Project Wrap-up

As a wrap-up comment on last Tuesday's presentations - amazing. We have spent a semester in the same class reading the same materials, and learning the same content, yet the instructional projects were so different and unique to each individual group. It was fun to watch how an instructional design could be created around just about anything, as long as you define your target audience and explain why they need to learn what it is that you are developing for them. As I observed all the different delivery methods, I am still not sure what the easiest method to use in a design would be. Honestly, when we planned our project, that wonderment continually went through my mind because I wanted to make the design as simple as we could manage to do without compromising on the end product. Although this is a Ed Tech field of study, the best delivery of instruction is not always about technology and sometimes has very little to with it at all. Well I am babbling - time to sign off!

Time to Restructure

I made a few connections as I read "Restructuring Education Through Technology" by Theodore Frick. The first thing I really connected with is that a 'teacher is one who guides or leads. To guide does not necessarily mean to instruct directly'. Even though I deliver a great deal of direct instruction in my teaching environment, I believe that some of the best learning comes from the ability to design your instruction so that you facilitate the learning and not always directly teach it - although there is a balance to be maintained.

Another connection was the story telling section. I just read the book "A Whole New Mind" and one of the author's key ideas is to teach through stories. Stories capture interest and engage the learner. I hadn't even thought of it as a sort of technology until I read this article. When you think about what you can design around it, it really expands on the possibilities.