Tuesday Class 11/07/06

Hello members of our Community-of-Learning,
This is Lynda Banks signing on to recap this week’s 800-2 class. As usual, it was a very interesting class—even though it started off with a test.


The test/quiz
Before the actual test, we reviewed a student-designed online series of quizzes using multiple-choice questions that covered the topics we have learned so far. It was designed with instant feedback: a green “Well done” box, or a red “This is the wrong answer, try again” box. I did not find this quiz to be aligned with the actual test we took, but it gave us another take on the interpretation of the material.

On the “real” test, there were 20 questions divided into three categories:
1) Several multiple choice
2) About 6-7 fill-in-the-blank
3) One “give an example”

The test gave us empathy for the learners for whom we are designing instruction. This week we will have the opportunity to design our own exam questions, so it was a useful experience to have taken an actual test before creating our own exam.

Communities of practice
The focus of the class discussion was situated cognition and its implications for instruction. Dr. Foreman reviewed the results of this week’s assignment that asked us to describe our own Communities of Learning/Practice, our place within them, and our learning trajectories. The results were fascinating, further revealing (in addition to the digital storytelling) what a well-rounded class we have:


Insiders and inbound:

• Jen Bamesberger is an “insider” in her contra dance community. She explained contra dancing with its spinning and jumping, and about the interaction of the participants.

• Dan Dworkin has been an insider for some time in the extreme sport of mountainboarding (a fast-growing sport worldwide). He has been a competitor, teacher, and events organizer on the national and international level. Since many of us did not know about the sport, Dan explained it to us and issued an invitation for us to join him in Snowmass, Colorado next summer for lessons.

• Ben Burling was previously an insider in the car-modification community and is now an insider at his company, having moved into a senior position where he is now mentoring others.

• Marshall Taxer is an insider in his company in the area of standards and compliance. In this company there are many “lone rangers” and forming a community of practice is not always easy.

• Michelle Gilkey is an insider in her company that is a network of computer consultants. There the community has formed easily and people readily share info and ideas.

• Cecile Lelievre is an insider in the metalsmith community. She is a goldsmith who creates her own jewelry in addition to being active in the association and publishing and updating various websites.

• Jana Rathman has been, and remains, an insider in the now-defunct startup company Epiphany, that created marketing analytics products. Even though Epiphany no longer exists, Jana receives calls to do consulting on the products and, now that she is taking instructional design courses, has been asked to develop training. So, she has been outbound in this community but is still a participant. Currently she participates in an online community of high school parents.

• Lynda Banks is an insider in a couple of non-profit organizations and is inbound in the sport of modern pentathlon (fencing, horse jumping, running, swimming, shooting) because her teenage daughter has been training at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs and aspires to compete in the Olympics.

• John Gulixson is the parent of small children and so is trying to remain on the periphery of his communities. However, his wife is a recruiter and John finds himself becoming an insider the recruiting community where he is teaching and designing courses for different types of job centers

• Carol John is inbound to becoming an insider in the ITEC community because she has already taken eight ITEC courses. Dr. Foreman clarified for us that to be a real insider in the ITEC community, a student must donate time to the department and contribute to the instructional design field.

Outbound

• Karen Giehler is a busy teacher who is trying to be outbound in her school community where she has been involved on several levels including curriculum committees.

• Dr. Foreman is attempting to be outbound in the Korean community where she has been very active as a volunteer.

• Cecile Lelievre is outbound in the martial arts community of taekwando, however she still updates their website.

• Marshall Taxer and his wife are outbound in the organization Canine Companions for Independence. Last week we saw in his digital story just how involved they were when he described caring for litters of rambunctious puppies!

• Dan Dworkin is outbound as an English and History teacher. He is now a Tech teacher but he still mentors the English and History teachers a few times each week.

How does one successfully become outbound?
Dan compared being outbound to a 12-step program where you have to remove yourself from the context where you were an insider. Dr. Foreman described how the university handles outbound professors who are about to retire. They are put on a 5-year outbound path where they are not required to attend meetings and thus become less and less of an insider.


How does one assess whether a person is outbound, or an insider?

• Look at the relationships with others in the community. Is the person viewed as an expert?
• Survey people in the field to see who is considered an insider/expert
  
• Observe who is giving presentations, writing articles for newsletters, speaking
• Look at the person’s portfolio of work
• Evaluate the person’s contribution to the organization
• 
  

Situated cognition: implications for instruction
We discussed the roll of the instructor, learning outcomes, and the role of the learner. The primary job of the learner is to have a goal and to actively participate—it is a community of “practice.” With today’s explosion of knowledge, we must rely more and more on our communities because it is increasingly difficult to possess all the knowledge ourselves that we need for projects.


Component Displacement Theory (CDT)
Dr. Forman presented the matrix developed by David Merrill, a student of Gagné, that explains how learners use knowledge. The x-axis progressed from Fact, Concept, Procedure, to Principle. The y-axis began at Remember and went to Use, then Discover. She instructed us to consider Merrill’s Component Theory when creating our quiz questions for next week.


Final Class Project
Dr. Foreman will post the criteria along with examples of former projects. In the meantime, be thinking about possible topics. We will write lesson plans considering all the theories we have covered, and synthesize them to develop our own learning theory.

The final class is December 12, so we have 3 class sessions plus the presentations on the 12th. There is no class on Nov 19, the week of Thanksgiving. Next week Susan Cline will be here to teach us about creating a wiki.

See you next week, Lynda Banks

San Franciso State University ITEC 800 Blog

San Franciso State University ITEC 800 Blog

The images for the 11/01/2006 Wednesday class are here .

p.s.
Sorry I don't know how to undo the last two posts.

Blog 11/1/06

Dr. Foreman will link digital stories to iLearn. You may access your story by going to: http://userwww.sfsu.edu/~YOURNAME/itec800/
“YOURNAME” is whatever your username is for your SFSU Webmail.

We all got a chance to reflect on our digital storytelling experience. Some words used to describe the experience were: difficult, personal, satisfying, enjoyable, torture, sharing, “therapized”, technical, skill-oriented, interesting, easy, good time – all in all everyone got something worthwhile out of it.

Dr. Foreman made the point that her intention behind us doing the digital storytelling workshop was to demonstrate the value of project based learning versus expository learning. For this project we had to go through the process of creating a complete project in one day and so were able to experience almost immediate satisfaction and a sense of real accomplishment. The point was also made that learning has to be meaningful and the personal nature of this assignment naturally made it more meaningful.

After our discussion of storytelling, some of our classmates presented lessons to us. Erica taught us to make wormy dirt cups and Nora how to get the attention of a person who is deaf and say hello and how are you in American Sign Language. Devorah taught us how to make a book and Doris to make a California Roll. Philip taught us the method for producing an owl call (though few of us succeeded) and Diedre instructed us on how to introduce ourselves in Japanese.

We had a short discussion of advance organizers, Ausubel’s meaningful learning and schema theory. Advance organizers were discussed and the ones in our text were found to be inadequate in the “advance” sense. The intention of these is to give the learner a structure that will help him or her access the material to be learned more readily and allow the information to be integrated into already established schemata.

Ausubel's "meaningful learning" is concerned mostly with instructional practices or strategies rather than a theory of learning like schema theory (input-process-output). The emphasis in this chapter was on concept learning rather than procedural learning.

Schema theory says we recognize patterns and features and then apply these to novel experiences that follow a similar pattern or have similar features. Language acquisition is a good example of needing a grounding foundational schema in order to build on.

Ausubel wasn’t for pure discovery learning because he felt that learners can’t discover if they don’t have an “anchor” for their learning or an established concept of something. To Ausubel, in order to make learning meaningful it must have structure.

Next week there will be a short quiz: Review Chaters 1-4. Behaviorism, cognitivism, Gagne, Ausubel, and Schema Theory. Look over the advance organizers at the beginning of the chapters and the summaries at the end of the chapters as a means of review. Also read Chapter 5 and do the assignment associated with it on iLearn.

-Deb Farkas

San Franciso State University ITEC 800 Blog

Tuesday 31 October:

The first part of our class was for catching up. We started our class with several lesson plan presentations including the care and feeding of fish, tying knots, and working with color values. All of these presentations made good use of props and the last two involved significant interaction. From there we viewed several of the digital story telling assignments that we had created during the Saturday workshops. Like with the lesson plan presentations, there was a lot of variety in subject matter. The stories were set in far away places like Israel and Thailand and closer places like San Jose and Santa Rosa. All were interesting.

After viewing these stories, we briefly discussed the value of digital story telling. We identified a variety of things:

• getting to know our fellow students through their digital stories


• the value of this insight for learning communities


• the value of the process and collaboration of the workshop (you can't do this in isolation

After that, we began our main discussion of the reading assignment: Meaningful learning theory. Our discussion pointed out how this was, in some ways, another step in the evolution of our understanding of how students learn and how instructors instruct. Where Gagne discussed learning in isolation of any context, Ausubel focused a lot on context. His theories explained concept learning and not just skills learning; but he stopped short of getting into the issue of transfer of knowledge. Perhaps the biggest contribution of Ausubel to learning theory is his observations on implementation of learning such as advance organizeres.

It is quite interesting how chapter by chapter we build a more complete understanding of the learning process and how to best influence it.

This blog moment brought to you by Marshall Taxer

Wednesday DST

We met on Oct 28th, Leslie led the second DST workshop for ITEC 800. We thank Leslie for sharing her time and talent with our class. We started out the workshop by listening each other's story, a process called "Story Circle".


Story Circle--Oct 28, 2006--BH 170

Look at these people. Learning is all about engagement and involvement with the content material. They work from 9 am to 6:30 p.m--everyone finished their story! We will use this workshop experience to discuss constructivist view of learning.

DST session by Tuesday class

John, Carol, Ben, Michelle, Mauricio, and John participated in the first session. From 9 am to 5, without any break, they were producing their first digital story.

Click on their pictures to see their movies:
John's movie

Dave is giving me his annoyed look when I don't use F9 and F11.

Wednesday class October 18

Dr. Foreman recapped the AECT conference she attended last week.
AECT: Association for Educational Communications and Technology. Used to be Secondary Education of Teachers. aect.org. 1988 Foreman (since 1984) was a part of formulating the Mission Statement and Goals. Foreman distributed a survey reporting average salaries for various job responsibilities (TechTrends, vol 50). Interesting to see the various ranges by region. AECT Conference Blog: http://www.aect-members.org/DailyNews/ Web2.0 was discussed heavily. Because we’re in the technology field, we have to be more diligent in keeping up to date with emerging technologies.

Learning classic knowledge in school/field to build foundation. New things will come about that you can learn but you will apply basic learning theories when adapting to new learning. Grounding us. For example, Game theory didn’t come out of no-where, came about through 1 of the 3 theories.

Gagne Assignment:
Must state Learning outcomes in homework assignment. Foreman’s example is very simplified. Don’t need to provide rationale. (When you interview you must know Gagne’s learning outcome with events, be articulate, use it. Must be able to demonstrate.) Assignment was due on 10/18 but because of confusion will extend to 10/22. Students who submitted a document can re-upload.

Presentations—

Ben: Bird of Paradise flower napkin fold
Print out of step by step instructions, powerpoint, actual napkins to practice. Showed step by step, provided feedback along the way, asked questions, went around room and reviewed everyone’s bird of paradise napkin. Homework: make your own! Learning outcomes: motor skills, cognitive strategies, intellectual skills.


Deb: Took out of backpack bread, plates, pb, jelly, plastic knives & paper plates. Asked students to write procedural directions. Deb asked for someone to read their procedures and she performed each step as the participant read. Showed how literal you must be when creating procedures. Learning outcomes: intellectual skills, cognitive skills, motor skills


Elizabeth: How to make her own concoction—the Peachy Puff! Brought cups, recipe and samples. Lectured both ways to make the Peachy Puff. Distributed samples!


Tony: Opened with a story about a little boy in China and his gift to the emperor (a tile). Tangram (puzzle of 7 pcs). Step-by-step instructions of how to break the tile (square paper) into 7 pcs made up of triangles, squares and parallelograms. Learning about other shapes (trapezoid, right triangle, isosceles triangle), fractions and earth (trees, using saliva). Homework: Make it back into a square! http://nlvm.usu.edu/en/nav/topic_t_3.html


Valerie: Mexican paper flower. Handout with instructions. Pipe cleaners and colored tissue paper.


Kate: How to create a personal narrative story.
1. Point of view
2. Vivid descriptions and details
3. Conventions of story
4. Make a point – generalization: Universal shared truth/experience


Mary: Living healthy now so you don’t pay the price later. Stand up presentation.


Lane: How to upload digital images.

San Franciso State University ITEC 800 Blog

San Franciso State University ITEC 800 Blog

Weds 10/4

The class discussed the Digital Storytelling class we will have on Oct 21 or Oct. 28 in our classroom from 9:00-5:30. Leslie Rule of KQED visited the class and explained the workshop. The class is to:

Bring 1/2 to 3/4 page personal narrative
dbl space 12-point type; approx. 200 words.
Bring 10 digital images
Bring digital music

Each person will go home with a completed digital
storytelling DVD.

This is to be a 1st-person narrative story; it is composed in
these 4 steps:

1)Start with the experience; articulate the story for the Multi-Media
environment

2) Tell the story

3) Create the piece

4) Publish (to DVD or Web, etc)

It is helpful to start with a question "what if I could dream?"
then follow with - "Let me tell you the story of ......"

Go from general to specific, let the specific inform the general.

Discussion then ensued about validity of fiction stories in these
formats; it was ok'd but the preferred method is 1st-person narrative
autobiographical.

Next the class discussed Cognition with respect to the Net Generation
and the Digital Divide. As always in this class there were relevant
and sharpened opinions that straddled the digital divide. Dr. Foreman commented that we can use these tools to empower and motivate. Most people
seem to feel that we have to harness these tools and use them wisely
and with discretion in instruction; a view I subscribe to.

Nest and last the class took part in an exercise with the class split
into two groups - A & B. Each group looked at 20 objects in a box for
one minute and then were asked to remember as many of those objects
as possible. Group B was told 4 categories for the objects but group
A was not. Group B was found to have scored better when results were
tallied - giving evidence that chunking assists sensory memory. Dr.
Foreman noted that this experiment is markedly clear with a large
number of participants.

And so into the evening!

David Apelt

Tuesday Class, 10-3-06

We began with a discussion/recap of last week’s online forum topic regarding the Net Generation. Dr. Foreman sparked the discussion by asking for characteristics of the Net Generation. Characteristics such as immediacy, informality, multitasking, connectedness, social responsibility, and large networks of knowledge and information sharing were mentioned, along with some anecdotes from class members regarding instances in which we’ve observed these characteristics of the Net Generation in person.

We talked about the internet, and how it’s an amazing tool for distraction, and that we too, although not of the Net Generation, will end up multitasking and taking advantage of the immediacy of information when we are on the web.

We compared and contrasted different modes of digital communication (email, IM, online forums, blogs) and the degree to which each can or can’t get past superficial discussion.

We discussed whether the online forum worked as a class format for us—it seemed generally agreed that it did, and that we appreciated the freedom to take the thread in different directions rather than answer only specific questions. We also talked about the permanency of making a comment in writing rather than just in passing by means of speech, and how that’s difficult for some of us, and how we don’t think it’s necessarily difficult for most Net-Gen-ers, who seem more accustomed to sharing their every thought via blogs or MySpace.

We then moved to discussing this week’s reading. Dr. Foreman reviewed Cognitive Information Processing.

Then, she split the class into two, and sent half the class out. We played a game where she allowed us to observe the contents (roughly 20 items) of a box for about 30 seconds, and then gave us another 30 seconds to write down everything we could remember. The first group did so with only those instructions. The second group was informed that the items belonged to 4 categories, and she described the categories. The twenty items were:

Fork
Plate
Sugar
Equal
Mustard
Dollar
Battery
Screwdriver
Candle
Hair clip
Paper clip thingy
Post-its
Scotch tape
Comb
Lipstick
Lotion
Tylenol
Eraser
Pen
Little mustard packet
Pyramid thingy

Success in memorization did not vary much between the two groups. The second group was more likely to default to categorization as their memory-assistive method, but not all of them used it. The first group was more likely to use other methods, but all methods seemed useful. The methods mentioned included:
Categorization
Narratives
Method of Loci
Association with colors, shapes, and sound
Primacy/Recency

After the break, we continued discussing last week’s reading. Dr. Foreman passed out John’s outline and we used it to review the concepts. John’s was particularly interesting because he related it to his own experience and used examples from his life.

Then, Dr. Foreman split us into groups and we each took a section—sensory memory, working memory, long-term memory, or methods of incorporating these theories into instructional design, and came up with examples:

The first group, describing sensory memory, used driving and all the sensory input you receive while engaged in that activity… how much of it is dismissed, but how things such as sirens, similar cars, etc, can draw your attention.
They talked about how such things as recognizing stop signs have reached automaticity (able to do them without actively thinking about them.)

The second group described methods of moving information from short-term memory to long-term memory.

The third group used the analogy of the “jesus lizard” (bipedal and runs on water, defying easy characterization) to go through various theories of long-term memory.

The class then discussed the different theories, and we especially discussed PDP (parallel distributed processing) which seemed less straightforward than the other theories. We agreed it seemed more physical, more anatomical, whereas the other theories were more philosophical.

The fourth group discussed ways to use these theories in designing instruction, such as helping the students with selective attention, encoding, relating to one’s own experience, paraphrasing in one’s own words, drill and practice, etc.

Dr. Foreman ended the class and introduced the next assignment using Gagne’s Instructional Model and creating a taxonomy, due in three Tuesdays, and she also went over the items we are to bring to the Digital Storytelling Workshop on the 21st.

Signing off,
Michelle Gilkey

Learning Theories

SESSION BEGINS...
Dr. Foreman returned the Timeline assignments. GREAT JOB! Delivery and form is important in ITEC and with this assignment we took on the role of over achievers.
a
iLearn Updates:
*Dr. Foreman set the upload option in the Assignments section to allow for the retrieval of a document already sent.
*The Forum sections are set up to allow everyone to view and comment and the Assignment sections are set up to be viewed solely by Dr. Foreman.

Don't Forget:
*Write your weekly reflection following the discussion of the assigned reading.
*Saturday, October 28, 2006 is the Digital Storytelling Workshop


LECTURE: Learning Theories
Inquiry and the creative side of education is lost with the Standards. Can technology be the source of change?

Teachers need to offer variety in instruction, because there are different types of learners.

What is happening in the 21st Century?
Baby Boomers are teaching the Net Generation. Research is being conducted about new learning theories, because the Net Generation processes information differently. They are very technological; and an overstimulated generation. Gadgets appear to be an extension of their bodies.

Is technology good? It is too much like T.V.? Where is the balance? Is there guidance available to ensure that these tools are used effectively?

Is reading literacy on the decline because of technology?

There is a gap between the students with access to technology and those without. How will this affect instruction?

SMALL GROUPS: Behaviorist Perspective, Information Processing Perspective, and Constructivist Perspective Theories Exercise