The last section of your textbook discusses the concepts of distributed learning, reusability, rich media and the future of instructional design. Focus on the following for your post:
From Chapter 28 locate 5 examples of distributed learning.
Virtual Schools:
Virtual Schools:
http://zsem.k12.com/npages/1_paperclip_dyn.html?st=TX&se=Google&campaign=TX_National_Job_K120928&adgroup=TX_Nat_Virtual&kw=TX virtual academy&gclid=CN6wi7_zracCFY5l7AodGUBeAw
Mission: The core philosophy of TXVA@Southwest is that all young people can achieve academic excellence if they are provided rigorous instruction, high standards, informed guidance, and individual attention. Although we use the computer as a learning tool, we believe that education is primarily a human endeavor that relies on caring individuals, involved parents and committed teachers.
The Texas Virtual Academy@Southwest uses the K¹² curriculum to offer Eastern and North Central Texas students—including greater Abilene, Austin, Houston, Corpus Christi, Wichita Falls, and Dallas/Fort Worth—in grades 3-10 the opportunity to achieve their potential, tuition free. With individualized learning approaches, the Texas Virtual Academy@Southwest and K¹² provide the tools kids need to succeed—in school and beyond.
As a public online charter school funded by state tax dollars, the Texas Virtual Academy@Southwest (TXVA) makes it easy for you to be an active participant in your child’s education. You receive a complete curriculum, lesson planning programs, books and instructional materials, and access to all lessons and plans, at no cost to you—in short, everything your child needs for an excellent education. But TXVA@Southwest is not only about lessons. Teachers organize school outings to museums, roller- and ice-skating rinks, local zoos, and other interesting and enjoyable sites. These events bring families together and create real connections within the TXVA@Southwest community.
Silver Lake High School
The administration is constantly bringing new educational opportunities to Silver Lake High School. This year, Larry Winter, SLHS principal, said they decided to offer virtual online classes to students through Greenbush. He said the main reason these classes are being offered this year is because the school received a grant enabling classes to be free of cost to all students. If the online classes were not free this year, he said the school would have to pay $250-350 per class. Winter is unsure if the classes will remain free to the students and the school or if there will be a cost in the future. He predicts that if the classes are successful, they will still be offered without cost.
Hybrid Courses:
In order to meet the demand of various customers, Hybrid Flying School offers the following courses to Student Pilots:
Private Pilot Course (Integrated and Modular)
Business Pilot Course (IR (A) S.E. and Passenger Rating)
Commercial Pilot Course (Integrated and Modular Multi-Engine
Conversion Courses (Including IR (A) M.E.)
Instrument Rating (Airplane) Course (Integrated and Modular) ATPL
Conversion
Hybrid will soon start its Flying Instructor Course which will create a permanent platform for training instructors to promote aviation industry and supply pilots to airlines of Pakistan.
Chapter 30 takes a look at using rich media. Find or create a visual for instruction describing its surface and functional features.
I found Discovery Education http://www.discoveryeducation.com/ to be a great example of rich media that can expand beyond basic topics to a variety of topics. Discovery Education integrates seamlessly into any curriculum with 9,000 full-length videos segmented into 71,000 content-specific clips tied directly to state and national standards. Elements such as skill builders capture students’ attention and develop their problem solving skills. There are over 100 skill builders spanning core subject areas. This site also provides educational games to reinforce essential language arts and mathematics concepts through over 100 educational games. Math overviews and explanations is an area of Discovery Education that provides self-paced tutorials that explain difficult to understand mathematics concepts.
Here is a rich video:
Free distributed learning:
This site above provides access to over eighteen million free articles and books. There is a vast amount of free stuff out there but for one to use it you would need to evaluate the content.
Academic distributed learning:
Northern Arizona University provides:
- Academic units with assistance in developing and implementing plans for the assessment of student learning in online programs.
- Instructors with assistance in assessing learning in courses offered in multiple formats
- Assessment procedures for investigating the effectiveness of electric instruction
Skills-based training
Coaching is about having someone on your side. Someone with a neutral perspective to bounce ideas off and get the encouragement and support that you need to ask more of yourself and to accomplish what you want more easily. Wendy Bristow only uses theory and exercises that are of practical use. She states "My average score on evaluations is 9 out of 10 and people keep coming back for more – current corporate clients have been hiring me for an average of 9 years."
Chapter 29 discusses the concept of reusability. Think back over the courses you've had over your educational career and identify one with poor reusability characteristics. Explain how the course could be redesigned to improve reusability without changing the underlying content.
Through an online workshop using distance learning we were expected to sit in a classroom and listen to streaming video with a monotone instructor. In the efforts to listen and pay attention we all did fairly well the first hour, after that, it was very difficult to pay attention. We were unable to stop and rewind this particular device and were responsible for all of the content because afterwards we had to take an exam. To improve this workshop I would have a video where you could have the adult learners stop and restart when breaks were needed. Also you would need to stop the video when you needed to have a discussion about the subject matter. This could be carried out at a much higher success rate than the previous way that it was delivered. Any improvement would be better.
Chapter 30 takes a look at using rich media. Find or create a visual for instruction describing its surface and functional features.
I found Discovery Education http://www.discoveryeducation.com/ to be a great example of rich media that can expand beyond basic topics to a variety of topics. Discovery Education integrates seamlessly into any curriculum with 9,000 full-length videos segmented into 71,000 content-specific clips tied directly to state and national standards. Elements such as skill builders capture students’ attention and develop their problem solving skills. There are over 100 skill builders spanning core subject areas. This site also provides educational games to reinforce essential language arts and mathematics concepts through over 100 educational games. Math overviews and explanations is an area of Discovery Education that provides self-paced tutorials that explain difficult to understand mathematics concepts.
Here is a rich video:
Chapter 31 discusses the future of instructional technologies in the near future from metadata to nanotechnology. Describe how nanotechnology could be used to improve a specific job or task you are familiar with.
In this website, http://vimeo.com/10634042, Karen Coyle, digital library consultant and bibliographic data expert, discussed the future of metadata and its role in bibliographic data and the semantic web. Coyle addressed what the major transformations in the use and structure of data already underway mean for libraries, and what librarians can do to prepare, adapt, and take advantage of new possibilities.
The following is a video attempts to explain nanotechnology.
An amazing video!!!!!
From an educational perspective, considering much is unknown with the future of books, I can see how a very small chip would be used to access a multitude of information in libraries as well as textbooks. It’s hard to think about this concept but with the rapid movement of technology, it is extremely possible. I find this concept to be very beneficial to all students as they travel through the doors of education and will spend many hours researching all kinds of information.
And finally! Chapter 32 provides two points of view on the direction of the field - the straight and narrow road and the broad and inclusive road. Which point of view do you agree with and why?
I find myself more inclined to agree with the broad and inclusive road when it comes to instructional design and technology. The main reason is because the future of technology is so unknown. The narrower agenda can not meet the expansion of technology that will present itself in the near future. If we maintain a strict methodology, we aren’t allowing room for changes we have yet to imagine. A good example is the science of nanotechnology; many scientists express concerns over the social and ethical implications that nanotechnology will present. If IDT doesn’t remain flexible and adaptable to that change, progress will be extremely slow. I do appreciate that the broad and inclusive road will consider anthropology, sociology, and the humanities as sources of new ideas. Technology is becoming a major aspect of all these fields, especially considering the rise of social networking and Web 2.0 applications Last but not least, I also like the methods of sharing on the broad and inclusive road. It takes into the account the importance of social networking and the Internet in disseminating and collaborating on ideas and information. In the near future, much of our communication will be done this way. The broad and inclusive road takes this into account and sees the positive implications.
