First Semester Classes

My first two classes of my Masters Degree are

• EDPS 6430 Foundations of Instructional Design & Educational Technology
• EDPS 6451 Foundations of Learning.

For these classes, I'm keeping a blog of the happenings in them. It's also going to count as part of my Instructional Design grade. So, enjoy, try to make some sense of what I'm writing, or go check out my personal blog - it may be a little bit more interesting.....

Comrades evaluations

Blog critiques :

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Peter - 3, excellent. He gave me an in depth analysis of this blog, suggested several changes and complimented me on several aspects of the blog. Below you can read his critique and my responses.

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Leilani - 3, excellent. She was not as in depth as Peter, but made at least one excellent observation - the blog did not have much of "me" in it - it was all notes from class without any personal reactions or responses. I am hoping that "me" became more obvious as the blog progressed.

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Comrades :

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Joanna - 3, excellent. Joanna was the glue that kept us together, on track and on time. She would remind us (especially me) of what is due and when, and whenever my ADHD would hit hyper speed during a study session, she would drag me back on task. She would also make sure that all the parts of the assignment were there, and helped, equally with the rest of us, on the content.

Leilani - 3, excellent. Lani was halfway between me and Joanna on the organizational scale. She helped with content, she helped with keeping us on task and she did a lot of rewriting and perfecting the way our papers were written, making them sound a lot more professional than I did typing them in the first place.

Me, Steve - 3, excellent. (Yes, I think everyone was excellent). I did a lot of the typing and formatting of the papers, which didn't always work out the best (the bold debacle of the first paper in mind). I did the physical part of the first project, changing the tire, and a lot of the physical part of the tiling. I helped with content and with keeping the atmosphere from getting too serious. (Comic relief).

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Overall the three of us worked well together, I do not think that any one of us was burdened with an extra amount of the work. We did develop our own chores, responsibilities for the project that we took over or ended up without any official directive, it just happened. It's a group dynamic that I am looking forward to over the next couple of years.

Final Thoughts on Instructional Design

When I first started this class I pondered on why I needed to take this class, since I've been doing lesson plans for 15 years now, granted most of the time I do it in my head. Then we started breaking down a task, to the point of absurdness. Again, I wondered how this could be helpful, why we were forced to do this fruitless task.

As the semester continued forward, (as with my calculus classes years ago), things, purposes and the process started to make sense. When you set the idle on the carburetor on a car, you tighten the bolt down almost to the point of stalling the car, then you back off until you hit the right spot. Same with the breakdown in Instructional Design. You have to get to the point of absurdness so that you are positive you went too far, and then back off to a reasonable point. This has been useful to me in my position as School Technology Specialist. As I mentioned in our last presentation, I have had to send out e-mails explaining certain processes to the faculty. Processes that I know so well, without the practice of breaking it down (even if it is not on paper but just in my head) I would not see the steps to be able to decide if a novice needed to be told them or not. By the end of the semester I felt comfortable with the process and I felt a purpose for it.

And despite his evasiveness at times, I even enjoyed the professor.

Blog critique and response.

Pete and I critiqued each others blogs, here are his comments about mine and, afterwards, my reactions to those comments :

• Hi Steve,
  
  I've spent some time going through your idet classes blog and have made a few notes I will pass along to you here.
  
  I liked that your blog content accurately reflected the blog title, and I also liked the explanation of the content in the Kibitzing paragraph. It let the reader know what to expect and gave some direction on how to approach it.
  
  I liked the links to other places and thought the choice was good, i.e. your fellows and your own Web site. They each provided additional context for appreciating you and your blog.
  
  Your blog consisted of a fair amount of what seemed like notes taken on a laptop during your classes, which seemed fine, but there were formatting and punctuation inconsistencies across your various dated entries of the note-taking type. There were sentences with no capital at the front and no period at the ending, and there were caps and periods, and there were caps and no periods and no caps with periods. I would have appreciated a standardized choice throughout which would make it a bit easier to read and also look more professional.
  
  I did like your use of pictures and graphs and cartoons to illustrate and support your text entries. It kept it interesting and was much more easy on the eye than lots of text-only pages. It was also more motivating as a reader to continue reading.
  
  I liked your organization by class title and date for your entries. This was consistent throughout and was easy to follow as a reader. It also helped to understand your content by knowing which class and topic the comments were on.
  
  The colored text was interesting but seemed more like a thing to try out as a new blog host than as something used in a purposeful or consistent way across the blog. Your own Web site led me to believe you are an experienced blogger and blog creater so it seemed out of place a bit.
  
  Your use of bullets to summarize your points was a good choice for covering a lot of material in a small amount of space. I would again look at your formatting for consistency (see September 6 entry). There is double spacing and single spacing in sub-texts. Also, there are double, triple, and wider spacings between the various entries. there are also bullets with no heading in one of your entries in September. Standardizing such things can help the reader follow your organized entries from lessons as opposed to the flow-of-consciousness writing from thoughts during your classes.
  
  My only other thought is that you might want to add a note on the blog homepage listing the various classes you are taking so the reader has a heads-up as to what's ahead in your blog and will recognize it when we get there.
  
  Well done over all.
  Pete

It seems that his biggest criticism of the blog was in my inconsistencies. He liked that the purpose of the blog was clear, the use of pictures and graphics, and even the formatting - had the formatting been more consistent. Although I agree with him that a standardized format would look more professional and look better, my main goal at the time was to get the information down in a format that was clear to me. In the future I will try to be more consistent, it would look better that way, but I will still concentrate my effort on making the information understandable to me.

The other suggestion he made was a really good one, one that I have already implemented and plan to continue. He commented that it would be nice to have a list of the classes I am currently enrolled in at the top of the blog, so that the reader would immediately know the subjects that would be discussed in the subsequent posts. Excellent suggestion, and as you can see (if you scroll back to the top) I have done just that.

So, for the future I will :

• Try to be more consistent in my formatting - bullets, bolding (um, where do I remember that comment from before?) and coloring of text.
• Continue to keep a list of the classes I am currently enrolled in at the top of the blog.
• Continue to weave pictures and graphics into the text.

Viola. Thar' she be.