The view

Along with the first week of classes this trimester came an ice/snow storm that brought power outages for many, and left us all with two whole days without the Marlboro server. There was no email. There was no electronic library. There was no First Class and there was no Moodle. So I chose this photo of the view out my front door this past Tuesday to illustrate how it felt midweek. I could not see clearly. It is amazing how much we count on the internet to be our eyes. And it’s amazing how much we use it.

What are the different views of Instructional Design? The Institute of Electrical & Electronics Engineers has six steps: assess needs, analyze learners, write objectives, select instructional strategy, develop materials, and evaluate. The Dick and Carey model gives us ten steps: determine instructional goal, analyze goal, analyze the learners and context, write performance objectives, develop assessment instruments, develop instructional strategy, develop and select materials, evaluate, revise instructions, conduct summative evaluation. The Fink model begins with the situation factors such as the students and their prior knowledge as a springboard into the triad of goals, assessment, activities. To me they all seem to cover the same key points. None of the designs seem to be lacking anything. I resonate with the Fink model. I like it for two reasons: first that the situational factors inform, but are not an integral part of how the course will be taught. And secondly because I can work on one area and check how it affects the other two; as Fink states, What is distinctive about this model is that these components have been put together in a way that reveals and emphasizes their inter-relatedness.

Favorite vocabulary word of the week: UBIQUITOUS. Will (our teacher in Web II) loves to use this word to describe the web. Definition: omnipresent, everywhere.

So what’s the current view of the web? The buzzword is Web 2.0 or Read/Write, what Tim O’Reilly calls a web in perpetual beta. Folks are no longer just consuming the web, they are creating the web. Social activity is happening in cyberspace because people are linked together and collaborating on a global scale. It is these regular folks that are controlling the content on the web; and they not only make it and use it, but they recycle it and reuse it in other ways.

According to the Digital Media & Learning Fact Sheet from the MacArthur Foundation, Youth live media saturated lives, and make use of new media and technology. More than half of online teens have created content for the Internet. For example created a blog, personal web page, or shared artwork, photos, stories, or videos online. As teachers, we are going to have to keep up, and there are amazing new services to help us create content. On Gabcast.com we can record using VoIP, make audio greetings and add them to blogs, host conference calls, and create podcasts. On Odeo.com we can get Mp3s and audio channels, which can also be added to websites. Yackpack.com is for talking as a group, and with Skype.com we can “call” someone for free over the internet. With eyespot.com’s help we can combine video, photos, and music. It’s truly what Will Richardson says in "Blogs, Wikis, and Podcasts", More and more the “code” to teaching and learning that schools once held dear is disappearing, creating open-source-type classrooms in which everyone contributes to the curriculum.

There’s a lot to keep up with in the online world and things change fast. But there’s a certain playfulness about it all too; if you use it as the tool it was intended to be, and don’t take it too seriously. Goodnight, I’ve got to go and feed my Neopet….