My quest and passion for creativity has moved me to the direction of instructional design and technology. While hunting for interesting and concise blog to read for comprehension in order to produce a descent assignment, I stumbled upon quite a few fascinating ones that are just right for my expedition. In fact, I came to love the learning design theories principles by Mike Taylor, as it relates to this course. The science center blog was another favorites of mine since creating a science center is one of my agendas for the next school year. Finally, my dilemma of either finding a job in private or public school for next school year has made a step forward after reading my third blog, grass is greener. I hope you enjoy and learn something out of these three interesting blogs.
The first blog: Learning Design Principles by Mike Tailor takes you to the world of multimedia presentation on learning design principles. It clearly and vividly discusses eight learning principles with neat explanatory visuals. These learning design principles comprise with split attention principles - don’t split elements in space or time; the modality principle - narration plus picture, text plus pictures, and text; cognitive load principle - 2-4 elements of new information; redundancy principle - no repeats; coherence principle - no extras does not add to instructional goal; signaling principle - cues directs learners attention; segment principles - chunk into learner-paced segments; and pre-training principles - give learners main concepts first. In addition, you will also have access to Mike's e-portfolio, which is one of our major components in this course. This is a hands-on mind-on presentation that you will not want to miss. Love it!
Learning Design Principles
The second blog: Elementary Science Center Blog by Mrs. Mikegel is a neat science center ideas that elementary teachers together with parents would love to have access to. It consists of various elementary science topics from the beginning to the end of the school year. Some of these topics include the 5 senses, Living and Nonliving, Life Cycle, Rocks and Minerals, Day and Night, etc. It is organized for struggle-free browsing. In addition, you will find teaching tools, lesson & planning, curriculum, professional readings, and others. In my opinion, why reinvent the wheel while it is already invented for your easy access? Teachers and parents, please take advantage of this site and utilize it for the benefit of your students/children for the advancement of our communities, country, and globally as well.
Science Centers
The third blog: The Grass is Greener by an unknown teacher in DC, is his/her view about pros and cons in public and private schools. Personally, I leaned to this blog because I am in the same predicament presently. In my mind I feel trapped between looking for a job in private schools or stay and look around the public schools. As we all know, different people have different view of public and private school systems. Considering this post, I think I have found a piece of a puzzle to one of my personal questions. According to this post, the grass is greener under the feet of teachers in private schools because he/she feels there is freedom in private schools than it is in public schools. His/her description of public schools " a beast of decentralized system". Wow!
DC Teach
Learning Design Principles by Mike Tailor
ReplyDeleteThe video on this site provided the reader with a greater understanding of the role of the brain in integration multi-media into your instructional designing and attempts to explain why the use of text and graphics are important in designing a course.
As indicated in the above blog on this site, the video presentation on the site does provide us with principles to explain and demonstrate the effectiveness of integrating the use of pictures with words and provide us with a "to do" and a "not to do" lists. For instance, it tells us the we should not split information or split text and the graphics that goes with it as in these instances, we are also splitting the readers' attention and therefore making it more difficult for the reader to integrate the materials. According to the Taylor, the use of pairing text with a picture makes the text more memorable.
For those us in an Instructional Design class, the blog/video will prove very useful in helping us to better understand the role the brain plays in integrating, memorizing and recalling information, not only on a whiteboard or a text book, but more importantly on a computer screen.
I believe that in designing online courses, the designer can use illustrations animation and graphics as well to draw the audience's attention or alert the student to key information.
ReplyDeleteMy research into these as they relate to computer based instruction identified that graphics as being
#attentional - pictures or graphics attract attention to the material or direct attention within the material - hopefully using graphics in this way will heighten the likelihood that a user will remember the material.
# affective - pictures enhance enjoyment or affect emotions and attitudes
# cognitive - the cognitive use of graphics involves using pictures to increase comprehension (for example, providing elaboration for a text explanation), to improve recollection and retention, or to provide information that is not otherwise available
(Here's a section from the cellsalive.com website - Enhancing the Microscope Image which really uses graphics effectively to elaborate on text points)
# compensatory - the compensatory use of pictures involves helping poor readers by adding pictorial clues to decode text
From my experiences, I believe that the use of use multi-media should be done with due consideration to the end user. Designers should ensure that the graphics they use serve a purpose, if they don't they might distract the user. Consideration must also be paid to type of system used to prepare the course versus the system being used to view the course. A lot of graphics may cause a system to react very slowly.
If you are uploading video and audio transmissions they should be accompanied by a written transcription. Like me, some students prefer to read that watch or listen to information and others may prefer to have a written transcript to refer to at some time.
Use bold text, underlined text, italicized text, colored text, or all capital letters only when it is drawing the reader’s eye to something meaningful. Over-using these elements detracts from their meaningful use. When the all of the text is large, bold or colored, it fails to draw the reader’s eye to any particular items that you want to stick out.
Design pages to be esthetically appealing and professional-looking.
The Learning Design Principle by Mike Taylor is from Stella’s Blog. It is a video narration and many things are shared about the brain using multi-media. Through this video you learn about how much information causes the brain to overload and strategies that are helpful for the brain to retain information. Additionally, it provides information about why the use of graphic and print are important tools to use for learners to retain information. This video was very informative and as an Instructional designer, I will use the information I have learned to enhance my learning as well as others.
ReplyDeleteHi Stella,
ReplyDeleteI will be following your blog post through-out our course. I am looking forward to sharing and learning with you.
Bessie walker
Hi Stella,
ReplyDeleteIt is Ironic that we both chose the same project to discuss. This project was an experience that will be in long term memory. However, through this project we learned how essential it is to plan, organize and control the project with the other stakeholders (Portny, Mantel, Meredith, Shafer, & Sutton, 2008). Not only are these three components essential for the success of a project; also, communication with all stakeholders is a high priority to the success of any project. In fact communication is a (must) for all projects.
Reference:
Portny, S. E., Mantel, S. J., Meredith, J. R., Shafer, S. M., Sutton, M. M., &
Kramer, B. E. (2008). Project management: Planning, scheduling, and controlling projects. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc