R/D4

Reading chapter two, “What is Instructional Design?,” I was able to draw a few parallels between developing educational lesson plans and systems theory, defined on page 11 as a postulation “that a system and its elements are interdependent, synergistic, dynamic, and cybernetic.” The idea that elements of a lesson plan are interdependent is exhibited by examples such as the fact that an effective lesson requires that students’ prior knowledge be assessed to determine whether a lesson is ready to be introduced, that students should receive guided practice before they complete independent activities, and that assessments are required to determine appropriate remediation. Synergy is demonstrated in using assessments to evaluate the effectiveness of how a topic was introduced. Without an assessment, it would be hard to determine what remediation. You could reteach a lesson without an assessment or assess student knowledge without remediation, but to do one without the other severely weakens the effectiveness of these as individual elements. And lesson plans are dynamic in that observations by the teacher during independent practice can determine the need for adjusting the amount of guided practice used. I did have trouble relating lesson plans to systems theory in that it’s hard to view components of a lesson plan as cybernetic, which means that they efficiently communicate among themselves.

I found the core elements of ADDIE much easier to directly relate to the development of lesson plans than the initial definition of system theory. ADDIE is an acronym representing analysis, design, development, implementation and evaluation. Analysis is defined by the book as “conducting a needs assessment” or “identifying a performance problem.” In lesson plans, pre-assessments along with the “know” and “want to know” components of KWL are used for identifying the needs of an individual student. The design element relates to the bulk of a lesson plan: measurable objectives, planned learning activities, and identifying materials needed (i.e. specifying media). Development is used in lesson planning as described in the book: for “preparing student and instructor material as specified during design.” Implementation is equivalent to teaching the lesson a classroom. And finally, evaluation is the assessment used in a lesson. Just like in the evaluation stage of ADDIE, lesson assessment involves looking at the data collected and determining what may need to be retaught in a lesson; unit testing functions as a summative assessment. Another way of relating lesson planning to the instructional design model is illustrated in Figures 2.1 and 2.2. Neither lesson planning nor instructional design can be viewed as a linear process. Both require revision along the way.

As I mentioned already, specifying media is an important part of the design phase. One instructional medium that I was asked to evaluate this week was photo sharing. As the reading on Dale’s Cone of Experience suggested, using multiple instructional media can help students develop a better understanding of a concept. Photo sharing is a great tool for combining verbal symbols with still pictures to enhance vocabulary lessons. For instance, my pre-algebra students could use a photo sharing site’s commenting tool to create a visual dictionary of geometric terms. They could also use photos to illustrate a real world math problem, such as sharing a photograph of a Starbuck’s menu and writing about how to use unit rate to figure out the best value per ounce in their coffee sizes. In a botany class, a teacher or student could upload photos from a nature hike to a photo sharing site and have other students post the plant species in the comments section. On a class trip to a historical site, multiple students could capture photos, upload them to their individual photo sharing accounts, and tag them with a unique keyword shared by the group. A teacher or student could then search that keyword and see all the students’ photos aggregated into a single viewing page. Photo sharing is also very easy to integrate with English. For instance, a creative writing teacher could link to a photo album containing a sequence of five photos. Students could then be asked to write a short story based on the photos. A teacher doing a lesson on descriptive writing could post an album of photos from which students would select one and then write a detailed description of that photo.

Photo sharing has many possibilities and I do not foresee many behavior problems as long as acceptable use guidelines are laid out ahead of time. In fact, I would be more concerned about students respecting each other on discussion boards than students posting inappropriate photo content. The real question is whether photo sharing sites can be used more effectively than other web tools such as wikis and blogs. Most wikis and blogs allow you to upload photos directly to the wiki/blog site. Could the additional tools that these media offer provide a more enriching experience than a photo sharing site? Or does the simplicity of a photo sharing site make it more effective by reducing time spent trying to learn how to use it? What do you think about this?