Journal 8

Wow... I can't believe we're already at the next-to-last journal posting. This semester has really flown by!

I am still at the same point with my project: pretty much done with some minor modifications necessary by next week. My client is really excited about her site (She said, "I feel like a legitimate photographer now!"), and I am pleased with how it has turned out. I think it looks professional, serves its purpose, and has some good design elements!

I've really had to push myself with design this semester. I do NOT have an eye for design, so it is something I've had to pay close attention to. The Krause book, Pinterest, and Google searches have all served as good resources for design.

At the dress rehearsal, I had a good response to my project. The people who stopped by had the same suggestions for me as the changes I had already intended to make. I also realized while showing off the site that one of my plug-ins was not functioning as intended, so I have to take some time to figure out what it going wrong. Love those technical difficulties!

As far as my service hours go:
2 hours- Setting up for and carrying out my first Technology/Yearbook Club meeting. This was the "Orientation" meeting, so we made some decisions about the yearbook, brainstormed page ideas, and looked at the yearbook interface.
3 hours- Photographing the Outdoor Classroom Cleanup day with students! My Technology/Yearbook Club students joined me, so I taught them how to use the digital camera, talked some quick photography tips (taking a mix of candid shots and posed, varieties of angles, etc.), and monitored their picture-taking. They had a blast, and you should see some of the goofy self-portraits that ended up on my SD card!
1 hour- Had our second Technology/Yearbook Club meeting. This time, I got FLIP cameras in their hands and let them loose! Not really... we had the general guideline that we were making a PSA about using manners, and we split into teams. They had so much fun!

Total Service Hours: 12 hours

A fun Pinterest find...

From: Top Web Design Schools

Journal 7

A teacher at my school sent the staff a link to this article about math self-concept:
To Get Students Interested in Math, Address Their Self-Concept

While the article was not about teaching with technology, the link is simple to make. In the article, the author points out that,

I learned that, regardless of how ‘tough’ some students are or how weak their math skills are, teenagers still love feeling successful when they become good at something or when they figure something out. A sequence of small successes can lead students to develop intrinsic motivation to learn and take risks in a classroom . . .

Isn't it the same with ANY new skill, including technology? Everyone loves to feel successful and hates feeling uncapable. The article goes on to talk about how to teach to address a student's self-concept:

Instead, I began to design my lessons and accompanying student work so that (1) all of my students could successfully complete the first problem or task independently, and in which (2) the sequence of problems/tasks matched my students’ tolerance for challenge and self-concept.

It all sounds like scaffolding to me. While this article touches on building that self-confidence and self-concept in math and taking the words "I can't" out of a student's vocabulary, the same rings true for teaching anyone, young or old, about technology. You have to make lessons where students can achieve and slowly build up their confidence. A child who has never touched a keyboard before can't be expected to create a PowerPoint, so start at the basics. Scaffold and teach to make all students successfull, and as they see that success, their self-confidence in technology (and self-confidence, in general!) will skyrocket. It just takes patience and scaffolding.

While this article and journal was not about design in the aesthetic sense, it is very much about the instructional design process. I have had to scaffold myself this semester, not overwhelming myself and expecting myself to learn the complicated before the basics. Especially with Dreamweaver, I had to take it step-by-step and learn the foundational elements before I could begin the complicated. Through this process, I have found myself building a self-concept in both web design and the design principles that I did not have before, and it has resulted in a higher self-confidence level in these two areas.

Journal 6

Not too much to update at this point. I've spent the past 2 weeks working through difficulties with adding images to the website. The template's Gallery option didn't work as I wanted, so I had to find a plug-in that met my needs. Once I picked the plug-in (Next Gen Gallery), I had to figure out how to make it display properly within the template. There were some frustrating moments, but I feel like it works now! I'm at somewhat of a halt at the moment; I have the website looking the way I want it with the information I've been given. It's very close to being completely finished and is just lacking a bit of information from my client. She just got home from a cruise, so I'm giving her a bit of settling in time before I bug her about these last couple of elements.

Thinking of our reading for this week, The Nature and Origin of Instructional Objects, I was able to connect most with Pillar 1:

Interactions between teacher and learner require clear communication and presentation of information. A learner-centered take on instruction would make sure the learner-as-individual gets a good message, presented in a clear way, suited to his or her prior knowledge and learning preferences, with lots of opportunities to use the new information in practice. Thus the teacher-learner relationship can rely heavily on cognitive learning psychology to achieve good transmission of information.

All of the elements listed for Pillar 1 (Cognitive Load, Instructional Guidance, Schemas, etc.) reminded me of the learner-centered "guided" teaching that has been pushed in the recent years. Guided Reading seems to have been a cornerstone of good reading instruction in the past years, but recently, there has also been a push toward Guided Math, and now I'm hearing Guided Science and Guided Social Studies. The guided teaching principles match the elements of Pillar 1, in that it is all about individualized instruction that directly meets the student's needs in a way that best appeals to each student. These instructional techniques are directly in line with cognitive psychology, but do they include any elements of the other three pillars? Yes, I agree that it is important to teach a child at his or her own instructional level, but with 100% of the focus being on these guided instructional techniques, are we leaving out the other 3 pillars?