The Debate on Instructional Design Models

I know I've mentioned this site in class, and I'm sure Dr. Nicholson has as well, but in case you haven't checked it out already, I thought I'd post a bit on Elliott Masie's LearningTown.

Elliott Masie is an instructional design guru-founder of the MASIE Center, and essentially the go to guy when it comes to cutting edge learning development and best practices.

LearningTown is a huge online forum that brings together people from all walks of the instructional design and technology industry. Members have individual profile pages and use the site to network, participate in threaded discussions, message each other, share resources, and join groups of like minded professionals. As part of a class activity in Dr. N's eLearning Concepts and Techniques course, we all joined the site and did some perusing and investigating.

There are tons of interesting discussions on nearly any topic related to instructional design and technology you can think of, but the one that stuck with me the most was a question posed by Elliott Masie himself: Do We Need A New Instructional Design Model?
Follow the link to follow the discussion.

Various professionals talk here about the "real world" of instructional and course design, what works, what doesn't, and how the industry is changing. It's a great way for students and professionals to keep a finger on the pulse of the industry, pose questions to a large community, or just read a lot of interesting opinions and resources.

NASA - A Great Website for Educators and Kids Who Love Science, Math, and Technology!

I found a terrific website for anyone who is interested in Science. NASA has a website that features video clips geared to kids K-5, 6-8 and 9 to 12th grade. They are short, 5 to 10 minute video clips that are designed to inspire kids to learn more about science, technology, math, and engineering and are free to every student and teacher in the country! There are over 220 NASA eClips that range in topics (K-5) from What is a Tide, What is Weather, Digging in Moon Dirt, and The Math Behind How Gears Work. For 6th to 8th graders the topics cover subjects such as Lunar Habitats, Hurricane Hunters, Scale Models and Ratios, and Solar Power on Earth. Ninth to twelfth graders can learn about Space Food, How Global Positioning Systems Work, NASA and NASCAR, and Invention of the Doppler Radar. There are also videos for the general public such as how NASA technologies help archeolgists discover ancient artifacts in the NASA 360: Episode 4 video. I watched a few and they are fascinating and I learned a lot like there are always 24 satellites circling the earth but 12 only available to you (for GPS) because the other 12 are on the other side of the world! And the new applications that scientists are finding out that GPS is useful for that it was never designed for! Curious? Go check out the site, there is something for everyone!

Beam me up, Scotty.

As I was glued to my TV on Tuesday night watching the election coverage, I discovered that many stations had really gone all out with their technology usage during their broadcasts. Instead of static maps and boring political analysts, some stations were using smart boards, interactive graphics, and wonder of all wonders, holograms. In case you didn't happen to catch any of CNN's coverage, they were using holographic spokespeople to report from different locations around the country. They even beamed in a hip-hop celebrity (Will I. Am from the Black Eyed Peas) to discuss his support of President-Elect Obama. I think this new technology could really open up some interesting ways to report the news. Imagine having a reporter that's station in a war zone or on location after a devastating natural disaster being able to be holographically shown on the news. Who knows, maybe we could one day have our favorite reporter beamed into our own living room to interact with.
In case you missed seeing this, here is a video of CNN's new technology in action:

Girls and Technology

TECHNOLOGY, GIRLS, TECHNOLOGY, GIRLS

I feel, after completing research for many of my assignments and attending the KSRA Reading Conference in October, that the United States is definitely behind the times with the use of technology. Okay, maybe not the entire United States - but definitely some specific locations. I found a website based out of Queensland, Australia that actually believes girls can and should become more involved in ICT endeavors. They have actually created a website devoted just for girls interested in ICT. The entire website has many useful links associated with technology and the way they incoprorate within the educational system.


Main Site Visited:
Department of Education, Training and the Arts --- Queensland

Visit these links that are also posted there:

Girls in ICT Information

Girls in ICT Website

More Good Free Programs

I know it's not my week, but I was reading the post below about free anti-virus programs and thought of some other great free apps. These are for opening .zip and .rar files as well as compressing files to .zip. These tools can be very useful when operating online. Despite broadband becoming more common, most mail programs still place restrictions on attachment sizes. The programs are Cam Unzip, which allows zipping and unzipping of files and ExtractNow, which allows you to decompress .rar files. I hope these help people out, I've been using them at work for months and haven't had any problems.

More Mathematical (and other) Resources

While I was working on my lessons for the blackboard project, I felt it was necessary to include resources for students. Everyone has been providing such great resources, but I’m beginning to wonder: If we provide our students with so many resources, will they use them or will they be overwhelmed? I narrowed a list to six resources for mathematics and included a quick statement about what they include. Then if students want to add more, they may. For those of you that would find mathematics resources (there are other subjects in some as well) of use, here is my list:
http://www.mathwarehouse.com – provides interactive tools for practicing prerequisite skills (algebra, geometry, etc.)
www.purplemath.com – includes examples and easy-to-understand explanations on a variety of mathematical topics.
http://www.hippocampus.org/?gclid=CM6l65_gw5YCFQNfFQod3Wt1wg – multimedia source for calculus topics (lessons to watch and listen). There are other subjects at this site as well.
http://mathforum.org/math.topics.html - from Drexel University, this encompasses a wide range of mathematical topics at a number of levels. All sorts of goodies in this resource.
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/ - “ the web’s most extensive mathematics resource”. This site is a bit more technical and may be hard to understand at times, but it really does have almost everything.
http://free.ed.gov/subjects.cfm?subject_id=186&toplvl=33 – breaks math down into the five areas that the PSSA tests on: Algebra, Data Analysis, Geometry, Numbers and Operation, and Measurement. Calculus IS on there! You have to search around for what you want, but Algebra will lead you to a calculus application. This is a really comprehensive source. Not all of the links are equally engaging, so again, hunt around. This site also provides other subject lessons and activities.
I hope you find these useful! I’m actually going to use a few of these and other topic-specific sites this week in my calculus class. These resources are free, so we only need technology that will support it – and we have that.

Literacy & Technology

Just returned from the KRSA Reading Conference in King of Prussia. I heard a great speaker Dr. Donald Leu from the University of Connecticut. He spoke in depth about the need for a connection between literacy and technology. He spoke about how our country is far behind the times in preparing our children for future endeavors in the world of technology. Please take a moment to check out the website related to Dr. Leu and the University of Connecticut. There are many useful links depending on what you are interested in reading about.

http://www.literacy.uconn.edu/littech.htm

Software Essentials for the Modern Educator

Today I came across a link to Judy Brown's website. In bright red letters, I read the words, "I have been working on mobile learning and tools specific to mobile learning," and I was hooked! Although the page was not about mobile learning, it still had a lot of great information relating to Web 2.0 tools. She listed an amazing site that would be useful for any educator because it provides a wide variety of software tools that educators want to use for free; or at least, most of them are free!

Visit the "Software Essentials for the Modern Educator" page to find new tools that may be helpful to you as an educator.

Podcasting and Technology Budget

In November, I will be going to a mathematical conference for two days, and already I am wondering what to do to continue my students’ learning when I am gone. I certainly have nothing against leaving substitute plans, but from experience, if the substitute shows up, he or she is often not certified in mathematics. This is not so much a problem when I leave a detailed description of the algebra needed to solve some problems. However, no matter the depth of the explanation, I cannot expect someone to come in and understand the lesson I have prepared for AP Calculus; this is not a required course to graduate. Since time is short, and concepts are many, I do not want students to be stagnant. The wonderful idea of podcasting may just suite me for this absence in the classroom. On eLearningnews.net, http://www.elearningnews.net/view_news.php?news_id=1063 ,I found an article that states:
'Podcasting for Learning in Universities' offers a model for podcasting, describes how podcasting is used in universities worldwide and has a practical step-by-step guide to producing podcasts for education. It also shows that:

• Students benefit from podcasting making resources easier to use, accessible, reusable and more fun
• Lecturers benefit as podcasting is easy, quick and DIY

Clearly, I’d be excited to use this technology if I knew our network could support it! This brings me to a question: how much is appropriate to spend on technology each year in a school district? I’d love to hear your opinion!

True E-Learning?

Inspired by the YouTube video shared by Chris, I recalled something that I had seen a while back that is less e-learning overall and more technology, how we interact with it and how it interacts with us. These last two elements fascinate me.

The title is "The Machine is Us/using Us."



So I take away from this that true e-learning is learning that is done not by us, but by the "E" that we use... :)

Joking aside, while this video is not specifically directed at e-learning (it was produced by an ethnographer), it nevertheless is a great tie-in with Chris' offering if viewed in the light of our evolving interactivity with e-resources. If (maybe a big if) there are fundamental changes in how we interact as a society, this most certainly warrants a look at how this affects learning.

By the way, 4 1/2 minutes seems to be a pretty common time for these YouTube instructional/inspirational vids. Perhaps that has something to do with our class discussion on attention spans...

A Brave New World Video

I'm sort of a "motivational video junkie" and have come across another one that I really like. Although, I already submitted a different post this week, I wanted to share this video; it seems so relevant to Instructional Technology.

Star Trek Classroom

A group of "techperts" (experts) at Durham University have designed the first interactive classroom desks. The multi-touch desks are very similar to giant Apple iPhones and allow interaction among students. "The team has linked up with manufacturers to design software, and desks that recognize multiple touches on the desktop, using vision systems that can see infrared light.
SynergyNet will integrate ICT into the fabric of the classroom. The new desk with a 'multi-touch' surface will be the central component; the desks will be networked and linked to a main smartboard offering new opportunities for teaching and collaboration."

The group recognized that this product could help collaborative group work improve its outcomes and also engage hard to reach learners. Watch the demo - I enjoyed the dominoes!

http://smart.dur.ac.uk/index.php?n=Main.MultitouchPage

Contingency Plans

After reading the design for the virtual classroom chapter in William Horton’s eLearning by Design, something in particular stuck with me. “The best way to prevent problems is to anticipate them.” This is not only true of eLearning, but as this is a type of teaching and learning that may be new to some of us, it is exceptionally important. I believe it is hard enough trying to create an engaging online meeting without worrying about all the potential downfalls when you have that meeting. Though, why spend the time in creating something great if it is going to fail when it is implemented? You might as well take the extra step and create a problem-solution list for technology failures, lack of student involvement, personal emergencies, and so on. This idea truly has me thinking about how useful a classroom management course could have been before I stepped into a classroom. Now I have created a mental list of potential problems and solutions about some common student misbehavior as well as problems with students understanding certain concepts. Human behavior is unpredictable, so prepare for as much as you can; it makes life easier. What are some situations in which you obtained benefits from anticipating problems?

Study Island. Web-Based Standardized Test Prep.

I've never heard of Study Island until my internship at Sayre Area High School started. Study Island is basically a web-based state assessment preparation for students. Since most states require students to take standardized tests, Study Island provides school districts opportunities to prepare their students for standardized tests. It seems to be an efficient alternative to paper based solutions while allowing for schools to meet standards based education.

Software Tutorials

Beginning an online course or using a new program for the first time can be a daunting task for some people. I have found a few FREE resources that make it easy to create short video tutorials to help the new learner get started greater ease. You might want to try them out for future reference: Camstudio and Freez Video Screen Capture.

Great Online Course Management Site

I would like to preface this by saying this is my first blog ever.
Now, after spending (surfing) time on the Web, I came across a website that I don't believe has been mentioned before. If it has, I apologize, but I think its a valuable resource for teachers and administrators to use if they want to set up an online course. Edu2.0 is a site for anyone - even those with minimal technical skills - to set up an online course for any subject for FREE. It is a great online course management system. Take the 3-minute tour http://www.edu20.org/tour and you will be impressed with how many resources are available.

The term edu2.0 stands for "next generation education" and also mentions that its a great tool for parents who want to home school their children. They also allow you to upload information and host if it for free. If you start at http://www.edu20.org/company/about , check out different tabs. Its an eye-appealling website that offers numerous options for the online teacher. Great site!