Reflection for Second Week

The second week looked at the design phase of instructional design. The design phase comes after the analysis phase so that you know the problem you are addressing, the needs of the learner, and the task you want them to accomplish. The design phase first looks at what you want the learner to accomplish. With a strong objective in place you can make sure that your instruction is aligned with your activities and assessment. When developing the instructional objectives it's important to remember the domains (cognitive, affective, and psychomotor) and the objective is to help the learner know what they will be able accomplish at the end of instruction. In my own classroom I know that remembering to tell my students the objective in lessons would help them better understand where they are at and whether or not they are accomplishing what I intended for them to accomplish. Many of my students this past year were constantly asking me, "Am I done?" "Is this good enough?" "Am I doing this right?" It would be nice to say, "Well, you look at the objective and you tell me." That way they are taking more responsiblity for their learning and self-assessing.

The next step in the design phase is sequencing. This is important because it helps you make sure that you are addressing content in a logical way for the benefit of the learner. In class we talked about the topical sequencing and the spiral sequencing. There was also the elaboration theory. Thinking back I would say that topical sequencing makes the most sense to me, but I'm sure I've used the spiral occaisionally and the elaboration theory at least in previous jobs. In my classroom, it will be interesting to look at lessons/units and see how they've been sequenced and determine if that is the best method.

The last steps of the design phase look at designing the instructional strategies and the message. What I thought was interesting in this part was the role of the text and visuals you use to convey the information. I never really thought how essential the look of what you're presenting is. I've noticed when someone gives me something that is impossible to read because of the fonts used, the colors, the pictures, or arrangement. All of these things can be maximized to allow the learner to learn from the information instead of getting distracted by something in the design.

In class this week we looked more at our web page and blog. I've enjoyed learning more about these. I started using a web page for my class room just a few months ago. What I like about what I'm learning in class is that I can have more freedom in my arrangement of my web page. Right now it seems that I will be rearranging the site as often as I rearrange my classroom, which is fairly regularly. I hope to find the correct layout quickly. I am concerned that I need to change the web address for my site to something that would be easier for my students and seem related to my classroom. I will say that I'm leaning towards using a web page for my class instead of a blog. I like blogs and have my own personal one, but I'm still not sure how I would incorporate it into my classroom. Although, having both so that I work to the strengths of each type would be nice. I'm still concerned of how to incorporate the use with my students. I teach fourth graders and connecting at school is problematic and not everyone has internet at home or access to the internet. So it seems that it will have to remain an optional thing. I am excited to try and find ways to use it, though.

Our team started working on our Task Analysis and the diagram for it. We completed a rough draft of the Task Analysis diagram and are working on the analysis phase of our project.