Learning from experience

Think back to an educational experience that you had that was NOT well designed. If you now had the chance to re-design that experience using multimedia in your lesson design, what would you do differently and WHY? Remember to include some ideas about assessing multimedia learning in your design.

That is the question for this week. Well I can think of one that is very recent. I had this one instructor who is absolutely wonderful. He is so knowledgeable about the subjects that he teaches but he will often lecture for around one hour straight. It might not be so bad if he would walk around or somethin but he would sit and just read. Yes straight read from notes. The information was very interesting but the average attention span for humans is about twenty minutes. No matter how much you were interested your mind would wander after that you were pretty much useless for the practical aspect of the class. I feel that had he used power point just to supplement the highlights and then lectured on the rest anything with a visual would have kept the classes attention. It wasn't just me. If I would ask any student for notes from the last half I noticed that all of us lost it around the same time. The notes would just stop. But during the practical part of the class we all learned so much from this guy. Like I said he was extremely knowledgeable. I have to wonder if he hated the lecture part as much as we did.

Current News

What’s in the news? Feb. 19, 2008
Teenagers Lead Lessons in Technology
Baltimoresun.com
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/education/k12/bal-ho.technology03feb03,0,6364191.story
Summary: This article is about high school student’s teaching fellow students and community citizens alike about computer technology. These students are very tech savvy and they enjoy holding classes after school hours to share their knowledge with other people. They teach things like photo shop, game design, web design, and programs like MS office. There is a middle school nearby and the students are able to come to the high school to learn the computer programs and advance their skills for when they start high school.
Response: This concept is very enlightening. The idea of students helping other students and adults to learn new skills can be very beneficial. It will not only benefit the “learners” but it will benefit the “teachers” as well by reinforcing their knowledge. It will force them to have a complete understanding of the subject in order to teach others about it. The must also really enjoy what they are doing to take time out of their schedules to help other people.
My View: I absolutely love this whole concept. I feel that it benefits everyone who is involved. The students that are teaching are gaining leadership abilities as well as strengthening their skills and helping people in the process. I feel that it is also bridging the gap between digital natives and digital immigrants. (This concept was introduced by Marc Prensky)
Questions: Is this program effective enough to introduce it to more schools? Would more neighborhoods be as receptive to a program that is similar? Could they take it a step further by having high school students go to elementary or middle schools to teach those students?

Web 2.0 tools in the classroom

I think that these tools will be very useful. I like the aspect of the Wiki page and that parents can access it to keep up with their children. I also like that the students can access it that whole concept can open up many doors for students and teachers as far as communication is concerned. The gliffy map was also very cool. I definately liked it better than putting the ideas down on paper because everything was movable. There was no erasing and redoing. I still have alot to learn on these tools I can't wait until I have more time to just sit down and mess with them.

Multimedia Projects in education

In Ivers and Barron book Multimedia projects in education they introduce so many ideas for Multimedia projects in the classroom. When I was in school I never did a Multimedia project (until college) I know kinda of showing my age. I really like the DDD-E model decide, design, develop, and evaluate. The whole concept will help both my students and myself as I will be learning with them. The whole step by step process with evaluation after each step is very good. I tend to jump into things so this will make me step back a little bit. The ideas that they gave for the teams was also very good I did not like it in school when they would just assign teams with no thought to how they would work together. In the book they give you many ideas about how to organize as far as skills, interests, and strenghts with the project. I am definately going to keep this book as a reference.