Down the Home Stretch

We are putting the finishing touches on the project. I've got 2 more evaluations that I am waiting for. One is from a 5th grade student, and the other is in 4th grade. The students have shown excitement for the online unit so far.

Having the students' feedback will be good for the team, because then we can see if there are any more last minute adjustments that we need to make. It's good to see students volunteering to do the projects after working on the website. On the first day, they had asked if they could do a presentation for the WebQuest.

As I've said, it's good to try out my lessons before I do them, and get feedback from students fot eh age group, and what's more, I can even ask my students to evaluate a lesson so that I can fix it for the next group of students. By doing this I could potentially have a solid year's worth of plans that are enjoyable to the students. My philosophy has always been, make it fun (or gross, depending on what I want them to remember).

What the SME is Going On With This Power Point

Our team is meeting with the SMEs this coming Monday. We are letting the experts look at our Super Weather Project. We have also started letting kids work through our website, so that we can get an idea of where we need to make adjustments. I am currently working on the "hook" for our project. I am also going to be putting my Power Point skills into action in my Research Methods class.

By having people look through the site, we will be able to get feedback from them, and then fine-tune anything that might be confusing or doesn't work. This does mean that our team will have to find students of fourth-grade age, and I believe Sandy Downs has done this. When we were going over Power Point in class, two of the team members had already been working on the Power Point portion of our project--in fact, the Power Points are finished, and ready for the SME to look at it. At this point, my job is to simply do what I have been assigned by our project leaders.

I have never really thought of using a SME in my in-class instruction. I have worked with a collaborative team; however, I have never taken my lesson plans to a professional, to see the viability of the methods used. Something I could do in the future would be to have my administrators and district specialists to look at unit plans.

Evaluating Gabcasting

Now that our team has split the work, we have been getting a lot of things done in the development stage. We haven't gotten to the point were we are implementing a prototype, therefore we haven't had a chance to evaluate our projects. Something I plan to do with the WebQuest I'm working on is to give it to a fourth grade kid in my neighborhood to try it out.

I must admit, I didn't like the Gabcasting feature for the project. I don' t see how this would help the project. I feel that Gabcasting is more work then it is worth. However, I do see the worth of audio recordings, and I would like to learn more about Podcasting. Something that the team is keeping in mind while working on the project is the first step in the Kirkpatric Model for summitive assessment. The reaction level asks the participant if they like the instruction. I think too often teachers fail to ask the students what they liked about a lesson. However, our team has gone to great langths to make this project fun.


In the 15th chapter of the Morrison, Ross, and Kemp text they mention innovation. They explain innovation is anything new to an organization, and what I need to keep in mind is that my students are considered my organization--my employers so to speak. Therefore, I need to show my students the advantages of new things, and the project will be a great catalyst for me and my students to accept innovation.

Let's WebQuest the Implementation Stage

Our team is current working on the Development stage of the project. I have asked to create the hook for our the project and I plan on making digital stories to convey the over-all theme. I have also been given the task of creating a WebQuest for how to predict the weather. The subject may change depending on if the objective and WebQuest are a good fit. Something that we as a group need to start working on this coming week would be formative and summative assessments.

Upon looking at our project report and reflecting on what we have been working on, it looks like our team is in good shape. We have divided up the work load and started working on actual instruction, and I think that we are keeping an adequate pace. As mentioned in the first paragraph, our group needs to start working on how we are going to assess throughout the unit. In the Morrison, Ross, and Kemp book it gives the benefits of pretesting. Now as a teacher we all know how important this is, but after discussing it in class, I realized that perhaps we should put more effort into it. I say this not because we don't understand what pretests are for, but because of the level of effectiveness of the test itself.

I have used pretest and post-test, but the tests I have may not be adequate. After reading chapters 10-11. I would like to gather all of my pre and post-tests and reevaluate their effectiveness I have used many test questions with the UCUTips website, but once again I haven't taken the time to evaluate those test questions for validity and reliability. WebQuests are very new to me, but I like the idea of them, partially because last year my students were always very excited any time I told them to pull out the laptops. Our group has found several websites that will be beneficial to the weather unit project, including a web site that simulates what happens as the air pressure drops, as well as the temperature. Another website shows a weather person give the weekly forecast.

Happy WebQuesting.

Developing a Digital Stroy

Several things come back to my mind when I think about last week's classes, but I will only reflect on a few. The Developing stage in the ADDIE modal is pretty self explanatory, and our team is well on our way in creating our digital story thanks to the class we had on Thursday. I think that digital stories will be an important delivery method throughout our group project. Science and weather, a lot of times, need pictorial representations because you can't always have examples of the weather you want when you're giving instruction. Something that wasn't gone over in class, but it was in the readings, is the section on cognitive load. Cognitive load refers to how much the mind can handle in the working memory.

Keeping in mind that the brain can only handle 5 to 9 bits of information at a time, our team needs to minimize the extraneous cognitive load in our digital stories and on our class web site. I think that I would like to work on this throughout our weather unit. I really like the subtopic in the readings about avoiding the split-attention effect. Our current digital story, I believe, is a good representations of an acceptable cognitive load and that focuses the viewer on the information that needs to be discriminated.

Going back to the class discussion on Wednesday about reviewing Modifications of materials/curriculum, I would like to go through the different Power Points that I have and key note presentations and modify them. I need to make them more visually friendly, keeping away from redundancies in information, but giving enough repetition for students to remember. With the digital story we have created, I have already thought of several digital stories that I can make, that will not only liven up my instruction, but help those musical learners retain information. Examples of digital stories that I can use in my classroom are the one our group is currently working on for severe weather, the effects of substance abuse, ways to conserve water, etc.

Design Phase/ Class on Blogger

Once again a lot of information, but I think that I'm getting a handle on things. I am gaining a deeper understanding of things I'm familiar with, like Bloom's Taxonomy, and scope and sequence. More importantly, I'm seeing how I can use the deeper knowledge and new concepts in my own classroom.

Too often in my classroom I only use one aspect in the Bloom's Taxonomy model (The Cognitive Domain.) Our group is only on the analysis stage, but I would like to keep the affective domain in mind when analyzing the learners. We have all had students that struggle in science because their low level of interest in the subject. When our group gets to the designing stage in our project I would like to try and incorporate the other domains. I'm also going to propose using Blogger as one of the instructional tools and or homework.

I really liked the idea of using Blogger as an extra item in homework. I understand that not every student will have a computer or the internet, but I feel that it will help the student that needs a fresh look on things. I've always enjoyed helping my students develop a love for learning, but I have had a few students that I was unable to reach. This past year I had a girl that didn't like reading, but now that I have a better understanding of instructional design and how to use the elaboration modal, I think that I will be able to work with kids that have negative views on the given subjects. If I take those students that don't care about certain subjects and use complex thinking in its simplest form, I think that I will be able to help the non-believers to see the light. I will do this by identifying those students that struggle in a subject because of an affective deficiency. Then I will identify fun experiences in that subject that the students can receive and respond to. I would then design ways to connect these experiences to things that the students already value (i.e. Science connected to Art).

The real way to do this.

Analysis Stage

During the first week of class I must admit I felt a little overwhelmed. Now that I have had a chance to look at the readings and view the power points from the class, I am able to see what was learned, or should I say what I remembered, how this will be used in our group project, and how am I going to use this in my own classroom.

Even though Monday's class was intense and filled with a lot of information, I was able to come home with a better understanding of the Analysis stage as well as its importance. In our project we are creating a curriculum for a group of kids that we don't have, so when working on the project I will be thinking of the students I had this last year in school. With last year's students in mind I will identify some of the academic, specific, and learning styles.
Our group has decided to use the Weather standard in the Science curriculum for the fourth grade. I have already decided to work on a simple weather objective to do a task analysis diagram on (it's still a work in progress). These are a few things that I have tried to work with from Monday's classes.

I think that now that our team has a clearer idea of where to start, in terms of the analysis stage of ADDIE, we can begin with confidence. We plan on discussing and working through the objectives that we have chosen in the science curriculum, and I will enjoy the task analysis portion of the procedure.

I can already see how I could apply these techniques in future lessons plans in my classroom. I've never had the ability to analyze the learning characteristics of my students in a way that is effective in the classroom. What little chance I did have to do this did not yield lasting results in my instruction because of my lack of organization. Looking at these ways to organize the different characteristics of my students, i.e. specific characteristics and learning styles, will help in directing my instruction. I also see the benefit of using task analysis, especially with the students that are not performing at a 4th grade level. It gives me a visual of where the disconnect is in their understanding and prior knowledge.