Section 7: New Directions in Instructional Design and Technology

Item 1: Distributed or e-learning environment

Our secondary level students do not participate in distributed learning at this time, although there has been discussion to offer it in the future.  I feel much discussion between the district and participating college or university, and parents, needs to take place, and agreements drawn up between all parties involved, before this form of instructional delivery can be an option for our students. Whether discussions would concern the time of instruction, computer capability, access to Internet and software, the cost per student, eligibility requirements, schedules, all these factors and possibly others would help to shape distributed learning in our district. Distributed learning would place sole responsibility on our students to maintain active participation in their online courses, although many already participate in concurrent enrollment, but in a classroom, person-to-person setting. I think our students would welcome participating in distributed learning with our local college and/or university.  It would give them an option to enroll in additional courses, whether high school or college, in a distributed learning fashion or face-to-face, which they might not otherwise have room for in a traditional schedule.

Personally, distributed education has made it possible for me to be part of the growing number of individuals receiving their education online. My logins are on my own time, usually in the early evenings after work and after dinner. I do not miss the interaction with classmates in a traditional educational setting because the Internet makes it possible to interact socially in a similar manner. Of course, I cannot invite a classmate to coffee after class, but certainly we can simulate the atmosphere in the privacy of our own homes just the same and it is not as noisy.

e-Learning, on the other hand, is available 24/7 in our district. In all grade levels our teachers utilize various online software for daily instruction. And whether it is a link through our district website, or a URL that the student has memorized, or is bookmarked in their personal home computer or electronic device, the use of fun and engaging e-learning sites are recommended by our district in the classroom or at home. It is my understanding that after much consideration iPads will soon make their way into our halls of education at the secondary level and into the hands of every secondary level student. We are very excited about this venture and are confident that our students will utilize their iPads to access e-learning sites, some of which will be installed as a permanent fixture in the iPad's operating system, to build upon their knowledge following the classroom instruction. In fact, I feel incidental learning results often from e-learning just for fun.

Item 2:  Reusable design or learning objects

Our district maintains a public website wherein every item referenced therein is reusable. And with good intentions, too. Most items placed in the website are not copyrighted and our Public Relations office assures that all the necessary parent and student permissions have been obtained prior to pictures or tapings are displayed for the public to see. Of course, many of these items might appear on someone’s Facebook page later, appropriate or not, much to the district’s dismay. 

I work very closely with our district’s Management Information Systems (MIS) office due to the technology pathways we offer. This school year MIS rolled out Active Directory to all our campuses which allows for MIS to have internal access to all district computers and thus they are able to provide technical support from their office at a much fast rate than before. Also, like Public Relations, MIS is also our authorizing unit for every campus’ and teacher’s website’s rights, permissions, standards, content, and context.

Item 3:  Rich media

Whenever I think of rich media, I think of Second Life, a virtual world where, when left to the creative imagination, nothing is impossible. I was impressed with this online technology when I was first introduced to it. I really think this is the future of our learning design for any age group inspite of the chapter readings that studies have found there is no significant difference between learning from animation and still visuals (Reiser & Dempsey, 2007, p. 316).  Our younger learners love this form of technology. I feel we need to capitalize on what they love to work with in order to help them learn with it.

Closer to the home front, students in our secondary level video production courses are called upon to volunteer, or intern, to videotape our sports games, usually at the direction of our Public Relations office. Public Relations provides the electronic equipment or sometimes our students use their classroom equipment. Often times our students are asked to edit the tapes, which provides for good practice following their classroom instruction. But it is the Public Relations office that places the final touches on the tapes and uploads them onto the district website.  I am not sure if Public Relations allows for reuseability of these resources or if they insert any metadata upon uploading them to the website. They might not do so because of privacy laws surrounding children, even though parents permit the photographing or videotaping of their children.

However on a personal level, for college courses and a family business I have created websites where the insertion of metadata is a must for online hits and well, because the nature of our family business is a photography studio, we do not grant permission for reuseability of any source. I love working with cascading sheets to formulate web pages. I update only necessary information from time to time leaving the side bars untouched.

In all our technology courses, we encourage the use of simulated course work and provide software enabling its use. From computer applications, to culinary arts, to agriculture, students are applying instruction to simulated work. It is gratifying to know that students enjoy working with and learning through simulated lessons.  

Farming Simulator 2013 Basics Episode 1

Item 4: Emerging instructional technologies, such as artificial intelligence, cybernetics, Web 2.0, virtual worlds, electronic games, etc.

I think I want to keep artificial intelligence as far away from me as possible. I get nervous just thinking of what could go wrong. Maybe I have seen one too many movies on the matter. The newer AI’s are not like Rosie from The Jetsons.  Ahem.  I love the re-runs of this show. But one day AI will be the norm in society, and I am glad it will not be in my lifetime.

 

Web 2.0 and electronic games bring many possibilities into my work life. Due to Internet access restrictions in our district, we are unable to access many of the Web 2.0 websites at our campuses. In its place, our regional educational service center has made it possible for our district to utilize Project Share through their website. Project Share enables our teachers to use this site in an educational, social manner, much like Wikis and Blogs and Cloud storage.  

When I first started teaching a student asked me why I didn’t use games for instruction. This was a challenge for me to do, since I was a digital immigrant teaching Business Ed. I was speechless nonetheless. But it got me to thinking how students prefer to learn, and it still has me thinking about how best they learn and how am I going to accommodate this 21^st century manner of learning. It is not their fault that their choice of instruction is different from mine. Instruction and learning evolve. As an educator I have to adapt. Instructional designers should keep this mind as they continue to design instructional resource materials, and as educators it is for the benefit of our students that we adapt and adopt 21^st century skills so as to not teach as if we were still back in the 20^th century.

Teaching for the 21^st Century

Source:

Reiser, R.A., & Dempsey, J.V. (1992). Trends and issues in instructional design and technology. In H.D. Stolovitch (Ed.), The Development and Evolution of Human Performance Improvement (pp. 134-146). Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson Education, Inc.