Module 5

Keller's ARCS model is the perfect way to motiviate both students and teachers. Attention, relevance, confidence, and satisfaction all determine how someone feels about a particular lesson or task. Being the computer teacher, I am always the one trying to encourage teachers to use technology in the classroom. In North Carolina, all eighth grade students are required to take and pass a computer skills test. I learned that it was not my job to prepare the students for this test, it was every teacher job. Every discipline was expected to incoroporate spreadsheets, databases, presentation software, and word processing in their courses. When I explained this to the math, english, social studies, science and all the other teachers, they got upset. I realized it was because they didn't know themselves how to use these things and felt they had no support. So I arranged times with several teachers to show them a program they could use and how to use it in their course. For example with a science teacher, I showed him what the state expected students to know concerning spreadsheets, taught him the proper terminology, and helped him to see he is responsible for incorporating these lessons. I showed him how to use a spreadsheet to plot the information from an earthquake, view it as a plot graph, and then students could identify what type of shift was made during the earthquake. We looked up resources on the internet, practiced a couple of times and the teacher became totally comfortable and was able to use it in his class. It also gave him satisfaction knowing that if he needeed help I was available.

Group Work

Do you believe that humans have a basic instinct to "interact and work s a group," as Rheingold proposed in his discussion of the evolution of Wikipedia as a collectively developed encyclopedia?

How can technology facilitate collaboration among learners based on constructivist principles?

I most definitely believe that we have the basic instinct to work as a group. I observed ants completely devour a snail in a matter of minutes through team work. We are failing our students by not teaching them the very skill they need to be successful in a work environment. The benefit of goal setting is to see how small steps can help you reach a big goal and would apply to an individual or a team. If teachers were to model this behavior in the classroom, students will get it through practice. Allowing students to work in teams is a bigger extension of that. Everyone breaking the product down into a smaller achievable goals will teach responsibility also. Googledocs is a great collaboration tool that I have used that promotes teamwork. My students used it responsibly and was able to work at their own pace to complete a group project. The book says, "the constructivist approach is to identify learning goals in context and learners identifying and pursing personal goals" (Driscoll, p. 390-391). The conditions for constructivist learning also support the fact that we must incorporate technology to make school realistic and relevant. The five conditions for learning are, "1. embed learning in complex, realistic, and relevant environments, 2. provide the social negotiation, 3. support multiple perspective, 4. encourage ownership in learning and 5. nurture self-awareness of knowledge construction process" (Driscoll, p. 393-394). These conditions can be our goals as educators and we have to come up with different concepts that will use technology.

Driscoll, M. (2005). Psychology of learning for instruction (3rd ed.). Boston: Pearson Education, Inc

Kerr, Downes,and Kapp

Karl Kapp says, "The issue many forget is that “learning” is not one thing…it is a multi-layered word that tends to get treated as if it were just one thing…and it’s not. It is multi-facetted and that is why developing new models for “learning” is so difficult…there are too many levels for one school of thought or one model to do it all. "I believe this is the best statement from what we had to read from the blogs. What I am starting to realize is that it may not be the teachers responsibility to create this learning environment. I am thinking this burden is on the administration and county education administrators. I have a master's in education and I have not been introduced to these theories and ways of learning. I have been taught how to teach my discipline, not necessarily individual students. Why does it take this long in my educational journey to learn these things? I then begin to think about how each classroom at my old school was like their own world with different practices, rules, expectations, learning styles, and discipline. We all know that students learn differently but who is preparing teachers to meet these needs.I am loving learning about the different theories and I know there needs to be a balance. I will be able to look at my students individually and know which theory would benefit them the most, so I have an advantage. I just think things are currently done backwards. We have all these state rules telling us to meet every students needs but the big question is HOW.I personally think schools or classrooms should be set up for the different learning styles. And then the other theories can be incorporated to promote balance. Teachers just are not trained on these theories and therefore they are kinda doing what is best for them in the classrooms. These reads are showing me how unprepared teachers are to meet our students needs these days.

http://billkerr2.blogspot.com/2007/01/isms-as-filter-not-blinker.html
http://karlkapp.blogspot.com/2007/01/out-and-about-discussion-on-educational.html

Module 1

Critique Siemens’s “metaphors of educators.” Which of these metaphors best describes the role you believe an instructor should take in a digital classroom or workplace? Is there a better metaphor to reflect your view of the role of instructors?

Siemen's metaphor of "master artist" closely relates to my belief of the role as an educator. I do believe it is an instructor's job to guide and direct students learning as an individual (Siemen, 2008). I have found that allowing students to work at different paces has allowed students to master concepts to the best of their ability. I like this metaphor the most because of the environment it can create in the classroom.

Viewing an educator as a "network administrator" does bring out the important role of building and creating networks (Siemen, 2008). Networking is an important skill to learn to be used in the workplace. Making these connections will help students learn the value of searching for resources and using them as a tool.

The metaphor I would use for education is a business. We deal with supply, demand, marketing, management, leadership, problem solving skills, and so much more. The educational system is like a business from the top down. If the employees are happy then it transfers to the customers, so if teachers are happy then they will want to make students happy. As educators we should be looking at the common trends in the workplace, which would be the demand. It is our job to prepare students to be employable, which would be the supply the jobs need. Being prepared will allow students be marketable. Students will be eventually trying to promote themselves and their knowledge. Any manger, supervisor, CEO, or any other head of a business will want employees to have problem solving skills. That is something I feel students are lacking these days. Technology can be used to enhance these skills. In the classrooms we can help students set goals and ways to achieve them so they will be productive members of society as adults.

Siemens, G. (2008, January 27). Learning and knowing in networks: Changing roles for educators and designers. Paper presented to ITFORUM. Retrieved from http://it.coe.uga.edu/itforum/Paper105/Siemens.pdf