What an interesting class! I was thinking about how this could be tied back to the Schuh and Barab article we read at the start of the semester. I think that one's morals can be linked to his ontological and epistemological views. Are morals interpreted and constructed or are they constant and absolute? Obviously the church would hold to the latter. Even if that is true we still have to make choices in the real world which is not so cut and dry. The case that we read today had to clear right or wrong answer. Each decision was laden with moral dilemmas.
Having code of ethics is nothing new. It is possible that the most famous code of ethics was chivalry. A quick Google search will give you a list of this ethical code:
To fear God and maintain His Church
To serve the liege lord in valor and faith
To protect the weak and defenceless
To give succour to widows and orphans
To refrain from the wanton giving of offence
To live by honour and for glory
To despise pecuniary reward
To fight for the welfare of all
To obey those placed in authority
To guard the honour of fellow knights
To eschew unfairness, meanness and deceit
To keep faith
At all times to speak the truth
To persevere to the end in any enterprise begun
To respect the honour of women
Never to refuse a challenge from an equal
Never to turn the back upon a foe
Some say that chivalry is dead but I would contend that it was never alive to begin with. These were brutal warriors not priests. Which brings me to my point: Should warriors be expected to follow the same ethical code that bishops and priests live by? I don't know the answer to that.
The creation process and innovation seemed interesting but the description of his day to day activities seems really tedious. He did mention how they would sometimes create flash animation and other media. I wonder how they make that decision to make them and what does it cost.
Dan Randell
I liked how these two video go together but I guess that I would ask him the same question as before.
Debra
Great interview! I guess I would want to know how he balances his job, calling, and family.
Rob,
Wow! Sounds like you landed a whale :) Sounds like he has developed amazing personal skills. Why did he recommend those organizations? Are they journals?
John
What are the alternative technologies that they are considering? Are they going to develop a new program or use one that has already been developed. I have noticed that some departments are moving to BrainHoney. "stop covering the content and start uncovering the content." We need to start moving away from grades and more toward understanding. The last part of the interview I think validates the use of PLEs.
Tiffany and Kevin,
What a story! Literacy for change--what do people need to know to make change in their lives. There was a great metaphor of hands, head, heart, feet. He started about drop out rates. What are the classes like? What are the teaching strategies that they use in their classes? It almost seemed like the classes were similar to therapy. Interesting concept of keeping the manual in a wiki format. That is just a heart breaking story but it ended with some hope.
Keith
What are companies doing with the information? How much information they get? What is oniture and what data does it give you?
David
They talk about solving problems. What are their common problems? What are they writing?
She talked about making the client happy. Who are the clients?
Chrisjian,
Very well done! Who are the people on his team. He mentioned that psychology was important. Do they have psychologists on their team?
Alberto,
How do they decide if they want an animation? What does that cost? Is it common for them to have been teachers prior?
While reading the article "The Moral Dimensions of Instructional Design" I couldn't help but ask if I conformed to the mimetic or the transformative tradition of instructional design. If someone simply asked me I would have clearly said transformative. However, if someone evaluated the way that I actually taught I would worry that they would say mimetic.
While I was reading about the consciences in the Moral Dimensions and I realized that I was a better teacher than I am a student. I felt that I was strong in all of the consciences when I was teaching. However, as a student I feel much weaker when I examine my new life as a student. Today is a the day of my repentance.
These were today's most popular stories on cnn.com. I think that it is fair to say that Americans are losing interest in the war when a model's death gets 2 1/2 more hits than the President's announcement to send more troops into Afghanistan.
On the front page of Monday's issue of the Daily Universe there was an article called Facebook in Decline? The article contains a quote that says it all, "When you start getting friended by you grandmother, I think that is when [Facebook] starts loosing its cool." This reminded me of when I started wearing Sketchers to school. One student who wore the same shoes was obviously distraught and I noticed that he started wearing the shoes less and less. As soon as I started wearing those shoes to school they became less cool. However, notice that the article doesn't say that when your grandmother starts using Facebook that it loses its cool. If that were the case iPods would have lost their cool and kids would have switched to Zunes a long time ago. Facebook will lose its cool when kids' status updates are read by their parents as well as their friends. Kids will obviously feel threatened when these two worlds collide. If teachers are to use Facebook in a nonthreatening way they need keep this in mind and use privacy setting to stay at a distance yet still being able to give motivation or send reminders.
My experience with Blackboard is pretty limited. I have used it in one of my classes this semester and see some advantages and disadvantages. It is helpful to post assignments and notes. I also would assume that a teacher could post webcasts or other video material for students to watch and because it is password protected the student can better take advantage of fair use. However, Blackboard is owned and operated by the school. The student has no ownership of the tool. Other disadvantages may include:
mostly used for only academic purposes
students can't upload media
can't have synchronous or asynchronous video communications
I think that this video shows a good example of history TCK (at least of my understanding of TCK). It shows a technology that a historian is using but that a teacher would never use in the K12 classroom.
Can we get more done with less work and more learning? Can we figure out how learning naturally happen and how can be amplify that? We have to look at the social learning "we participate therefore we are." Understanding not knowledge is socially constructed. Social media can be a great way to do this and shows how design is so important. We have to look at the power of study groups. He was asked to find the single best predictor of success at college. He found that it was the ability to create or join a study group. It is more powerful than the teacher or attending class. Do study groups work virtually? It turns out that the study groups work just as well if the students know each other. In a study group each person is both a learner and teacher. Web 2.0 allows for distributed study groups. Can we make gen ed more personal though study groups? Can we be more efficient with the higher end courses by making it a more collective experience?
How to accelerate the learning to "be something" rather than learning "about something"?
It seems that there is a lot of confusion about what Google Wave is supposed to do. What what I can tell it has to potential to be the greatest collaboration tool on the web yet people are just not using it. I think that there are several reasons for that. For instance it is hard to collaborate when no one you know has an account. I also think that in part it could be a sort of expectation failure.
I recently visited this online learning moodle site and found this picture that was supposed to represent online learning http://elearning.stjulians.com/
This picture speaks volumes to me...literally. Why is it that there are these huge books coming out of the computer? Why is it not a teacher or a peer's outstretched hand? I think that this picture is an accurate description of what online education is today. When students are participating in online education they mostly interact with text. I believe that this image needs to change.
(I didn't see any reflection questions posted so I'm just writing some thoughts that I had)
It seems that both fields of Human Performance Technology and Evaluation and attempting to create standards and guidelines. This is nothing new. Similar things have gone on for hundreds of years. For instance during the Middle Ages it was common for a field or occupation to form guilds. These guilds performed a couple of purposes. First, the guild could set the standards or quality of work. In this way if someone purchased a product from a guild member they knew that they were getting a quality product. Which brings us to the second purpose of a guild, price control. Because the guild could control quality they could also control (to some degree) price.
These two articles talked a lot about what a good evaluation should look like and what a good evaluator or human performance technologist should do. They both fields seemed to list similar desired attributes of their practitioners such as good communication and facilitation skills. Although neither article mentions pay as a reason for setting standards I believe that it is one of the driving forces that has propelled this movement for setting standards. When poor work is performed it hurts the field. People loose respect for the field and in turn are not willing to pay as much for their work. These standards also help the clients to differentiate a a quality product to an inferior one. For instance, when people are able to distinguish a good bottle of wine they are willing to pay significantly more money as compared to an lesser quality bottle.
I know that their is no certification process for becoming an evaluator but I wounder if there is to be a Human Performance Technologists. It mentioned that they come from several different fields so I wounder if you just have to have some experience is one of those fields.
I also found these videos about the Fun Theory. I didn't know that Human Performance Technology could be so FUN!
Here is the final tour that I uploaded to my wiki: Persian Wars
Location
Activity Description
Google Earth Content
1. The Battle of Marathon
I want my students learn a little about the history of the Battle of Marathon but I am going to have them focus mostly on Pheidippides' two runs. I will create an overlay showing his run to Sparta and then have the students using the ruler to measure how long his runs were. I will also have them look at the terrain and see how hard it would have been not only to run the distance but also to run the terrain. I will also ask them if they think that it would have been possible for someone to have completed a run like that. To help them with that question I will include two videos that I have found on YouTube. Both are about ultramarathon runners: Video One and Video Two
Questions that I will ask my students:
How long were Pheidippides' two runs?
What do you notice about the terrain that would have made the runs even more difficult?
Do you think that it would have been possible?
They will use the ruler, an overlay, and the Terrain Layer. I will also include two videos in the placemarker
2. The Battle of Thermopylae
This is the location of the second battle of the Persian Wars. It was chosen because of it geography. However, that geography has changed in the last 2,500 years. I want the students to discover how it has changed and also why the location would have been chosen by the Greeks. In order to do this I will create another overlay of what the landscape used to look like and I will let them use the terrain layer to see why it was such a good location for the Greeks. I will also include a picture of the statue of Leonidas and using the Panoramio layer the students will be able to find where the statue is actually located.
Questions that I will ask my students:
How has the terrain changed over the last 2,500 years?
Why to think that this location was chosen by the Greeks?
Why would the terrain have helped the Greeks?
What do you think would have happened if the Greeks would have fought the Persians in an open field?
An image overlay, the terrain layer, and the Panoramio Layer.
3. Athens
Here I want my students to see what the Acropolis looks like today. To do this I will use the 3D Building Layer, 360 Cities Layer, and the Terrain Layer. Also, I want them to see what the Parthenon would have looked like when it was built. I found a great video that will help to show this: Video
Questions that I will ask them:
Why do you think that it was so expensive to build?
Do you think that he should have built the Parthenon or left the Acropolis in ashes?
What do you like about the building?
Why do you think that many people think that it was the most beautiful building ever built?
3D Building Layer, 360 Cities Layer, the Terrain Layer, and a YouTube video placed in the placemarker.
4. The Battle of Salamis
This was the battle that the Persian King and much of his army home. Similar to The Battle of Thermopylae this location was chosen for geographical reasons. To help them find why I will create an image overlay of the battle. Also, I will include two videos that describe the battle: Video One and Video Two
Questions that I will ask my students:
Why was this location better for the Greeks to fight the Persians as compared to fighting them in Athens?
How is this location similar to that of Thermopylae
An image overlay, the terrain overlay, and two YouTube videos placed in the placemarker.
I came across an interesting article in the New York Times. It seems to blend some of the things that we have been talking about in class. Mainly Expectation failure and implicit learning.
In this October's LDS General Conference one speaker said that teaching is not the filling of a bucket but the lighting of a fire. When I heard this I thought of the story of Prometheus. Prometheus was a Titan who stole fire from Zeus and gave it to mortals. As a punishment he was chained to a rock and every day an eagle would eat his liver which would then grow back for the eagle to eat the next day.
I asked myself the questions, "How can I give my students fire? and What am I willing to sacrifice to do it?"
What will be the educational implications to having a free tool like Google Wave? I would love to try it out but I think that my invite was lost in the mail.
I was mostly interested in the Bransford article. Recently I have been reading a lot about informal and formal learning in relation to Facebook. However, I was less familiar with implicit learning. One form of implicit learning is mimicking others behavior. The article pointed out that we are the most mimicking animals on earth. Children at a very young age begin to mimic peers at daycare. Children also start to mimic television characters. I have seen this behavior in my niece. At about 18 months she began to really like a music video called “How do You Know.” My niece soon began to mimic the main character Gisel dance moves. A recent YouTube video you can see a baby exhibiting similar behavior while watch a Beyonce music video. This form of mimicking behavior can also be seen in the implicit learning in things such as language syntax and cadence or stereotypes of gender and race.
Informal learning normally takes place outside of class. Informal learning is most directed by interest and motivation. Unlike formal learning that happens is setting such as school informal learning lacks set learning objectives. An example that they use in the article is a child who becomes interested in trains and begins reading about them and going to train exhibits.
Adaptive Expertise The article defines adaptive expertise as expert knowledge that supports continual learning, improvisation, and expansion. In L. Tom Peary conference talk he spoke about Norwegian ship builders who were give the task to build the roof for the Manti Temple. They had never built a roof before and struggled to find a solution to there problem. They soon realized that a roof and ship used the same principles and they simply designed a ship and then turned it upside down. These ship builders certainly continued their learning though improvisation and expansion. An adaptive expert can be high in innovation and efficiency where as a routine expert is simply efficient.
Much of the world of industry and education is in the business of doing. Getting employees and students to perform is not always easy. Although instructional technology and human performance technology may both look to training as a way of improving performance the latter also takes a larger view. HPT understands that the lack of skills and knowledge is only one cause of the lack of performance. However, they also see six others including incentives, tools, physical environment, and organizational systems. Although many companies will first try to implement training as a cure of poor performance it is not always the best solution. Training can be extremely expensive to do and in many cases is ineffective because the lack of skills or knowledge was not the root of the problem. It may be the equipment is faulty or the temperature is too high both of which are much less expensive to fix. As a result the solutions that a HPT is willing to consider will include just about anything. They do however look at the cost and benefit of a solution. If it is not cost efficient they will not do it.
One thing HPT examines that really caught my attention is incentives. It reminded me of something that I read years ago. It described a daycare in Tel Aviv that tried to stop parents from picking up their kids late by fining them $3.00 every time they did. What they found was that instead of late pickups declining they went up. This was the case because by paying the fine they were removing the moral incentive to do the right thing. This just shows how complex human behavior can be and how difficult the job of HPT can be but it can have dramatic improvements in productivity is implemented correctly.
I also thought of cash for grades programs and I wounder what a human performance technologist would say about the program.
Instructional design theory is used in very practical ways to create an environment where learning can easily occur. I thought it interesting that Reigeluth saw learning to include "cognitive, emotional, social, physical, and spiritual" (pg. 5). Unlike learning theory that studies the results of certain events or stimuli instructional design theory focuses on the desired result first and then designs an environment to achieve it. Dr. Gibbons wrote that learning theory looks for cause and effect relationships and instructional design theory seeks for effect and cause relationships. Furthermore, because instructional design theory is designed oriented it is more useful to practicing teachers because it can be applied in practical ways to help them teach their students. Reigeluth writes that the desired outcomes of instructional design theory are effectiveness, efficiency, and appeal. However in actual design their are trade-offs that must be made.
Reigeluth said, "instructional-design theory identifies methods of instruction (ways to support and facilitate learning) and the situations in which those methods should and should not be used." I have been thinking about the paper that I wrote on webcasting. From this reading I realized that the goals I had for the paper were not based on instructional design. I was looking for a solution to an instructional problem that I was having and because of the high poverty rate at my school I was unsure if it would be effective. However, it is clear that learning theory is the foundation for effective instructional design theory.
I have been reading a book called Disrupting Class and found many parallels to this article. Both saw the current model of instruction as ineffective for for solving our modern challenges. They also agree that technology will be the catalyst to start moving toward a more customized form of education. It seems that their thoughts are becoming reality. I recently talked my sister-in-law who had meet with someone who was working with Brain Honey. He had actually brought the book Disrupting Class to the meeting and was describing some exciting ways that they are trying to use technology to customize learning.
This is a great example of a webcast that a person can make using nothing but PowerPoint. PowerPoint has a bad reputation but it can be a great tool if it is used well.
I have to admit that I left class a little overwhelmed. I have always heard the importance of pretesting and schimas. I always looked at pretesting as a way to see if they already knew the material so that we could save time in class by skipping over it. I did use pretesting at times to learn that information and it was helpful. Today though I realized that I was missing something. I needed to pretest to discover misconceptions. For example, I'm sure that my students had misconceptions about Greek mythology (thank you Walt Disney!). I believed that their misconceptions were not a problem because I could simply wash them away by explaining the truth. I realize now that I was underestimating the power of "prior misknowledge."
Bransford talks about the importance of teaching metacognition. This reminded me of practice of Cognitive Apprenticship. Cognitive Apprenticeship contends that the same apprenticeship teaching strategies used to teach tangible and physical skills can be used to teach cognitive and metacognitive skills. Cognitive Apprenticeship’s primary purpose is to teach students the authentic skills that domain experts use in completing complex cognitive tasks. In order to teach complex cognitive skills the expert and novice need to externalize their internal cognitive processes. Once this is done their cognitive and metacognitive processes for completing the task can be compared. The master will then model correct cognitive skills, coach, and scaffold the apprentice in their independent attempts to use the same skills (Collins, Brown, & Newman, 1989). Cognitive Apprenticeships are based on Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development because the apprentice is asked to do tasks that are just beyond their independent capabilities. As the apprentice develops the scaffolding will fade away until the apprentice’s skills are close to that of the masters. I think that Cognitive Apprenticship and Active Learning go hand-in-hand. Through Cognitive Apprenticship a student could answer, "What strategies might [I] use to assess whether they understand someone else's meaning? What kinds of evidence do [I] need in order to believe particular claims? How can [I] build [my] own theories of phenomena and test them effectively?"
(For a summary of the Behaviorist Theory read my previous post.)
Cognitivism was created in reaction to the Behaviorist Theory. The Cognitivists theory states that in order to understand learning the black box needs to be opened. In order to truly learn something the cognitive structures in the mind has to mirror the structures of reality that exists outside of the mind. Similar to a computer information is coded into the mind where it can be retrieved. Unlike Behaviorism, it is not actions that demonstrate learning but it is the individual's "mind structure and the representations developed" in that mind.
Unlike Behaviorism and Cognitivism, Constructivism believes that reality is not absolute but reality and knowledge is subjective and relative to the individual and his environment. Knowledge is what the individual constructs it to be from experiences and their is no one true reality.
I have been asked several times what learning theory I agree most with. It is a difficult question to answer. I will say that I agree with Cognitivism in that I think the mind has the ability to code information for later retrieval. I also would agree with Paivio theory of dual-coding which states that information is not necessarily coded separately or independently. Information such as words or images can be linked together improving recall. I also in part believe Soioculturalism and more specifically Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD). I also hold to the Behaviorists view of the power of reinforcement to change behavior and fertilize the soil for true learning (although, I think most of Behaviorism is just "fertilizer").
I also believe that situated learning is important for students to become life long learners. Situated learning stresses the importance of learning by doing and engaging the student in real problem solving activities. That information should not be islands by themselves but should be linked to real world context. Brown, Commins, and Duguid (1989) point out that students in schools are too often simply given tools but they are never shown or required to actually use them. They go on to say that students may be successful in school not because they truly understand the content but because they have learned the school's culture. They stress that it is important to teach them the culture of the subject by having practice it much like an apprentice.
Similarly, I was always told to have my students discover information. For years I really struggled how to do that. It wasn't until I went on a couple of archeological digs and became familiar with that culture that I figured it out. I began showing my students pictures of artifacts and then letting them do the problem solving and teaching themselves and peers about the culture of that civilization. I was amazed how well the students were able to do it and their retention was amazing!
The article said, "some students feel it necessary to disguise effective strategies so that teachers believe the problems have been solved in the approved way." That made me think of these pictures.
In the video above Jim said that he was recreating an experiment where a scientist trained dogs to salivate at the sound of a bell. The scientist that Jim was referring to was the Russian Ivan Pavlov. Pavlov noticed that when a bell was rung when food was given to dogs eventually the dogs would begin to salivate at the sound of bell even when food was not present. This involuntary response to stimuli is referred to as respondent learning or classic conditioning.
Behaviorists also believe that learning can occur through operant conditioning when stimuli is presented (reinforcements of punishments) and the person voluntarily reacts a certain way. Another form of learning is called observational learning which is the Behaviorists' equivalent to the monkey-see-monkey-do effect.
Behaviorists believe that the only way to demonstrate learning is through observable behavior. The mind itself was considered a black box that could not be opened. The only thing that was important to observe was what went into the box and what came out.
In today's teaching it is clear that teachers are attempting to use conditioning to elicit certain behaviors form students. It is true that we all react to stimuli and that we can be conditioned to react a certain way. I have observed classes conditioned to react to certain stimuli. However, when I have seen it done it has always been in a administrative role (getting kids to stop talking, organize themselves in certain groups, or begin to clean up) so that true teaching and learning can occur.
The thought that all learning occurs from stimuli and positive or negative reinforcements says little of the divine nature of man. Man may share their environment with animals but that is not to say that man and animals operate on the same level. Contrary to the Behaviorists' view, we all have agency to react or not react to the things that we learn. Just because I do not change my behavior does not mean that I am not learning.
It better show the black box metaphor I made this image using clip art and word art.
Terms: Respondent behavior-(classical conditioning) behavior that is an involuntary reaction to stimulus. Pavlov’s dogs or Dwight and the mints
Operant behavior-behavior is voluntary reaction to stimuli or are simply emitted by an inherently active organism. Circus animals performing or students raising their hands.
Skinner’s S-R-S Response was the framework for operant learning. S (discriminative stimulus) – R (operant response) – S (contingent stimulus) Dog sees a wasp’s nest -- sticks his nose inside -- He gets stung
Behavior is more likely to reoccur if it has been rewarded, or reinforced.
Primary Reinforcer – One whose reinforcement value is biologically determined. Food
Conditioned Reinforcers – They are associated with the primary reinforcer.
This morning I saw a woman wheeling her book bag walking toward a set of doors. I speed up the pace of my walk so I could open the door for her. Right when I started to open the door she hit the handicap button opening the door next to the one I was holding and walked right through.
Many people say, "Chivalry is dead." I would disagree...it has just been replaced with technology.
I just recently started using Google reader. I have easily subscribed to several sites that I have been visiting for several years now. Once I saw how much time I was saving I quickly became a convert.
The true test to see if RSS was truly "really simple" came yesterday. Sure I saw the value in it but would my 65 year old mother. While in a hospital waiting room, my mom started talking about what she had read on blogs of family and friends. I asked her if she visits these blogs only to find that they were not updated. Of course her answer was yes. I knew she was ready for the invitation, "Do you want to see how you can follow blogs and only cheek them when they have been up dated?" For the next hour we found and subscribed to several blogs she enjoyed following (her only concern was that she was going to have to pay for the "subscriptions"). However, I wasn't sure if I was helping her or she was humoring me. Later that day I was showing her a friends Flickr page (http://www.flickr.com/photos/jpn/) and after viewing a few photographs she said, "Can you add that to my reader?" Success! One more convert saved.
Now that I have seen the social benefits it is easy to see what a powerful educational tool Google reader can be. Teacher blogs can be subscribed to by parents and teacher/students can better follow educational sites. Its simplicity makes a universal tool that can be used by grandmothers and grandchildren alike.
This summer I had the chance to go to an education conference in Washington D.C. and present a paper that I wrote on webcasting lectures for students. It was a lot of fun and I learned a great deal for all the presenters there.
Simulations can be an amazing teaching tool. I try to use them as often as possible in class. Watch the video below and answer the following questions: 1. What did Dwight do well? 2. What did Dwight do terribly wrong?! 3. How can we apply this to our own classroom simulations?
There is a great free program that we will be using for this course called VoiceThread. VoiceThread lets a user post an image or video and then anyone can comment on it (they can even draw on the image if they like). If you click on the picture above it will take you to this particular VoiceThread. You will hear a recording I made describing the assignment and you will also be able to hear or read your peer's comments.
In order to earn extra credit you will need to register and make a comment yourself. Below the picure of the book will be a box that says "sign in or register." You will need to register and upload a picture for your identity. I used a picture of myself but it can be any appropriate image/picture you like. Now you are ready to earn some extra credit and make a comment describing your own "time machine." You can do this by using a webcam, microphone, cellphone, or just typing it with your keyboard. This is a great opportunity for you to become familiar with this program before we start using it more regularly in class. Have fun with it!
Today in class we split up into two groups and had a timeline relay. The two groups competed to place all of the major events we would be discussing this year in their correct order on the timeline. I was happy to see how much knowledge the students already have on timelines and of the events we will be discussing this year.
Students were then given the challenge to create a timeline of their own lives. This can be done quickly using a program called Inspiration. Tomorrow we will go to a computer lap where students will be able to create a timeline simailar to the one I created above. If students would like to work on their timelines at home a trial version of Inspiration can be downloaded from the following website: http://www.inspiration.com/
I enjoyed the first day back at school! It was great to meet my students and I look forward to getting to know them better as the year goes on. I have sent home our class syllabus for students and parents to sign and read together. I have also posted the syllabus on my website (http://www.mrborup.com/classsyllabus). My classroom rules are called "Mr. Borup's Bees." You will see that they are simple but essential for both myself and students to follow in order to create a safe and effective community of learning.
The new school year is fast approaching and I am excited to get to know all of my new students. If we both prepare a little now we will be able to hit the ground running on the first day of school. There are just a few things each student will need to help them have a successful year: 1. Pens and Pencils 2. Spiral Notebook 3. Ruler 4. Colored Pencils 5. 3x5 Lined Index Cards 6. USB Memory Stick
If you have any questions please email me: borujere@d91.k12.id.us
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