HPI in the K-12 Setting

Many of the interacting elements that were described in the process of Human Performance Improvement, I believe, are the foundational components to sound teaching and learning practices. For example, clear expectations, must be expressed to the learner. I try to have an agenda on my board every morning for my students to get the big picture of what their day of learning will look like. Clear expectations are then needed in each individual lesson. Modeling gives students that clear picture of what it is the teacher wants them to be able to do. Rubrics are another way that teachers can express the expectations students are to achieve.

Timely and specific feedback is another element that learners need to guide them toward the achievement of the expectations that have been given to them. I have brief conferences with my students to provide them with the feedback they need, but I have to admit, when it comes to grading papers that have been written, I tend to be overwhelmed by the volume of material to grade prevent me from writing notes and pointing out all of the strengths and weaknesses in students’ work.

The availability of adequate resources can at times be difficult in the school setting. Are there enough textbooks to go around? Are there enough working computers in the lab to accommodate the entire class, or do some have to sit out or simply watch another student at the keyboard? Are teachers forced to use a curriculum that doesn’t provide the learner with adequate background information? These questions can seriously hinder the performance improvement process for some.

Policies and procedures are part and parcel to a smoothly running classroom. These provide the learner with a safe and predictable environment within which to learn and hopefully translate that learning to the standardized tests that measure their performance.

Academic performance isn’t the only type of performance elementary teachers like myself are interested in. We are also hoping to see children develop a positive social acumen. Incentives and consequences, as pointed out by Stolovich as another element in HPI, are an integral part of the daily life at school. Teachers need to be aware that consequences are developmentally appropriate and actually guide the student toward the desired performance and does not inadvertently provide the student with reinforcement of the undesired behavior.

There certainly is an art to applying all of these elements, and others, in the K-12 setting. What may work for one student may not for another. Each child brings with him or her a different set of abilities and backgrounds and teachers are constantly challenged to provide students with everything needed to grow as much as possible and to prove that growth on standardized tests and district assessments. 

Educational Podcasts 

Our district has a large ELL population, especially Korean students. My principal asked me last year to start a before-school tutoring program for these students to help them develop their English skills. I took one course in my undergrad work dealing with teaching ELLs, but feel that was not nearly enough to prepare me for this task. I have had a lot of trial and error. I discovered ESL Teacher Talk. This site has podcasts that give teachers information about various games and methods to use to teach ELLs of a variety of ages.

I think podcasts are another great way for educators to receive professional development and no or very low costs. Podcasts in the classroom are also another way in which the element of providing adequate resources to our students can be accomplished. 

Standing the Test of Time: The Web and Its Impact on Education

Technological advancements seem to have come in spurts over the past several decades. When the latest and greatest thing comes along, many believe they are seeing the future only to find that when the future arrives, the supposed transforming technology has faded away or more likely replaced by another. Films gave way to radio and television, but they played their part for a time. Educationally speaking, television hasn’t played the major role in education as once believed or hoped it would. Computers, as they decrease in size and price and increase in speed, capacity, and capability have found their way into an increasing number of classrooms and training environments. The Internet, which was once only available to those in the military and higher education, is now available to the masses. It seems to be increasing in its scope and ability to reach into our daily lives every year. Bulletin boards and chat rooms have given way to blogs and sites like Face Book where so many share their lives with anyone they can befriend. Email is so common that it has had an impact on the US Postal Service. In my opinion, the Internet is here to stay and will continue to grow and permeate our various educational systems.

The K-12 setting may be the area of least impact for the Internet for the time being. I believe that there are still barriers that prevent the Internet’s influence in this educational venue. The digital divide still exists which inhibits teachers’ ability to assign work requiring use of the Internet. Teacher preparatory institutions may or may not be providing adequate training in the use of online educational resources and how to blend their instruction to take greater advantage of the Web. Older teachers who are not as computer literate struggle with the use of technology in general and therefore would not be motivated or willing to explore and incorporate Internet resources into their instruction.  Districts who block various content on fears of exposing children to inappropriate material also impede the potential use of the Internet in the K-12 setting.

Colleges and Universities, as described in the text as, “…a recent study…revealed that during the 2004-2005 academic year, nearly two thirds of all colleges and universities in the United States offered online courses as well as accredited online degree programs.” indicate a strong impact of the Internet on this area of education. Online educational programs afford people the flexibility and convenience to study as their schedules allow and grant them more time with their families or to their jobs. Travel costs are eliminated as well as textbook costs in most cases. Enrollment in programs that ordinarily would be out of the question for many due to distance from the offering institution are now free to take advantage of a broader array of opportunities thanks the Internet.

I believe that business and industry will utilize the internet more and more. I cannot imagine, with the ever-increasing demands on businesses with regard to health care costs, taxes, and other regulations, that they wouldn’t want to take advantage of a cost effect way to train their workforce with the use of web-based instruction. Communication within the business world is greatly enhanced with the Internet as well. Why pay per diems and other travel expenses to gather together people for conferences, when tools such as Skype can still get the task done.

Every so often we hear hints of governmental regulation of the Internet and/or taxation on its use. If this were to take place, the impact the Internet can have on education would be greatly reduced.  It is my hope that it has grown to a point of permanence and popularity that such control will never occur.

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Edith, a 14 year-old girl in England, explains why she thinks she is being 'under-taught' as far as ICT (educational technology) is concerned, and what she thinks teachers should do about it.

Photo Sharing and Reflections on Instructional Design

I uploaded several pictures I have taken of my students this year in a couple of different activities to a flickr account. I have never used a photo sharing service before and I have to say I am hooked. I was amazed at how easy it was to add them to my page. Students would not have too much difficulty in doing the same once they had pictures downloaded from a camera to their computer.

One way I think photo sharing could be incorporated into an educational activity would be to require students to take pictures of the procedures they performed in a science fair project. Their photo sharing page would be documentation of what they did and they could easily add descriptions telling the viewer what is going on in each photo or step in the process they carried out in their experiment.

Concerns I always have when pictures of students themselves are posted to a public site is that there are never names associated with the pictures that could in any way identify the child.  Our district requires special permission to be granted from a parent before names are added to pictures on any site. Students could add personal information about themselves or classmates to pictures which could violate privacy or endanger them.

Organization and protection of pictures are benefits I can see with using a photo sharing site. All of the favorite shots can be kept in an easy to view spot with information on each. If a hard drive crashes or a flash drive is lost, the pictures are still safely kept on the sharing site. Another benefit is that friends and relatives who are separated geographically can stay in touch with one another in a more visual way by accessing the site. I could see grandparents enjoying such a service.

With regard to the reading assignment on instructional design, I found myself thinking of examples of how I have used the various aspects of ID when developing lesson plans and units in my class. However, there are some parts that I feel I do not incorporate or do so only marginally or ineffectively.

The students are definitely the center of the instructional development process. It is all about  the outcomes they produce. I am very much goal oriented, but the goals have been set for me as I must live up to the Grade Level Content Standards or the Common Core Standards, as we are increasingly moving toward. I believe, especially, in my reading class, that I have a meaningful way for students to perform. When they complete a book of their choice at their own reading level, they are to write a letter to me telling me all about the book. I can determine if they are understanding what they read. Response journals are another way I have students demonstrate their ability to utilize the various comprehension or fluency strategies I am teaching them. Book club discussion groups are an authentic setting, I believe, that allows students to perform and show what they know. It isn’t perfect, but I believe it is much more meaningful and authentic than a multiple choice test on a piece of text the had to read.

In math I am involved in creating formative assessments based on the GLCEs.  As a grade level team, we look at the results at the end of each quarter assessment and revise our instruction based on the strengths and weaknesses of our students. Finding the time, however, to go back and reteach those struggling students and keep up with the daily lessons our curriculum demands of us is a complicating matter to be sure.

Analysis does come into play with these formative assessments and MEAP scores provide some summative data for us to look at, but it is difficult to analysis to set overall goals as they have been set for us by the state as mentioned previously with the GLCEs.

Evaluation is tricky at times, too. Aside from the MEAP, there are two other evaluation tools we use in reading and one in math. The reading assessment, I believe, can be skewed due to nervousness in a student that hinders their fluency and accuracy in their oral reading. Are we getting a true picture of what the child has accomplished under these conditions? The math assessment is given at the beginning and end of the year and requires students to click multiple choice questions on a computer. Will a student rush through it just to call it done at the end of May when it is beautiful outside and they want to make sure they don’t miss any recess? I feel the evaluation tools we use, at times, do not give me an accurate picture of a child’s true progress and attainment of the goals that have been set for their learning.

Social Bookmarking and Defining Our Field

I was first introduced to delicious last summer and have been adding bookmarks bit by bit ever since. Recently, however, I have found that when I try to add a new bookmark, I am not able to simply paste in my copied URL. Delicious used to take me to a separate page to add my new bookmark. Now a small window pops up with a place for the new URL to go, but I am unable to right click and paste it in. This has been very inconvenient. I shared my troubles with a coworker and she introduced me to Diigo. I was able to import all of my bookmarked sites from Delicious to Diigo easily.  Diigo has become my preferred social bookmarking site, which allows for highlighting and sticky notes to be preserved on the sites I want to save.

I find social bookmarking a godsend! So often I would surf at home and find great sites and bookmark them on my computer there. Then I would get to school and wouldn’t have access to those sites when I needed to recall them. The same would happen at school when I wanted to retrieve something at home. Delicious took care of that problem immediately, of course. Now no matter where I am, I can access all of the sites I have collected. The tags help me find whatever I need quickly instead of having to scroll through URLs that may or may not hold meaning for me. So first of all, the value is for me personally to keep all of my resources organized and readily available to me anywhere I may be working.

Another way that social bookmarking can act as a valuable tool is by informing parents of my delicious or diigo account. So often parents want to know what good math sites are out there for their son or daughter to use to practice their math facts, for example. Instead of repeatedly jotting down a few or putting them in my newsletter or even providing individual links on my webpage, I think I need to just give parents my delicious.com address so that they can have access to all of the sites I have found to be valuable. Then they can search the tags and hopefully create a delicious account of their own and collect sites that are useful to them and their children.

As for the definitions of Instructional Technology, or should I say, Instruction Design and Technology, I was surprised by how far back the field dates. I certainly have not thought of it existing in the 1920s.  I’m old enough to remember film strips in elementary school and even mimeograph copies as opposed to “Xerox” copies. I even witnessed the operation of the strange cranking device in the backstage area of our school’s cafeteria. How far we have come! I can also recall the TV weatherman using an actual board to illustrate the forecast—no green screens and animations! I certainly didn’t think of these things as “technology” back then and it makes me smile now to think that those things were the advancements of the time.

I was also taken aback by the fact that there hasn’t been one definite understanding of the field, but with such ever-changing technologies and needs in education, I can understand the varied and shifting perspectives.  I suppose that my own views have tended to focus more on the media and the devices that help students learn. This past school year, however, I have been thinking of educational technology to include those things that facilitate teaching as well as learning. With all of the things that are expected of teachers, I have been trying to find ways that technology can help me manage my duties and responsibilities as a teacher. I am constantly needing more hours in each day and simply more of ME. I think of educational technology in terms of how it can provide me with ways to stretch the resources of time and energy. I think that this component to my definition of the field is covered in the terms of “facilitating learning” and “managing appropriate technological processes and resources” as defined by the AECT in 2006.

I like that the definition applies to areas of instruction outside of the field of education. One reason I am entering this field is so that I have skills that can apply to the private sector should I ever chose to, or am laid off from, public education.  “…intended to improve learning and performance in a variety of settings, particularly educational institutions and the workplace.” includes the business setting for educational technologists. Reiser’s and Dempey’s definition appeals to my desire to have a degree and skill set that will transfer from the field of education if I ever need to make such a shift in my career.