When September ends

This has been a rough week for school due to outside life. It sure is too bad that school is not my only life.

Here are the things that I have been able to accomplish by staying up LATE at night,

I finished developing the graphing unit by

-writing and finding assessment problems and activities

-writing instruction to ensure coverage of these assessments,

-and putting the various pieces together.

I am currently running it by a few (three so far, but I am recruiting more so I can get to eight) volunteer students. They are giving me great feedback, but they are working slower than I would like. I am not going to complain, as they are doing this out of the kindness of their hearts. So far they have indicated that my instructions are not as clear as they need to be. In a traditional setting, the written instructions can be vague because I supplement them with verbal and answer any questions before I go on. Online this is not the case. I have tried to fix these inadequate instructions, and have dabbled into posting verbal explanations with the written (Captivate and PowerPoint). I like this idea and will continue to investigate its worth.

My last step in the development will be to put all of this online. I will do this through out the process, but will accelerate it to help my volunteer students to be able to get the material faster.

I have started on the next unit by analyzing it and writing learning goals. I have started to break them into skills required and have started to develop instructional goals. I should be done with this by the end of the weekend.

Tom

September 21, 2006

Me enjoying my time at the computer.

I have finally finished the AD steps in this ADDIE process. I am ready to start putting it all together and coming up with some content (D). It has been a very time intensive process, but one that will get faster each time I go along. I will now move on to developing the instruction and the online materials. I am questioning my timeline, and will probably make major changes in the near future, AKA tonight. We will see.

So far,

Lessons learned: This takes time, and being a beginner sucks!

Progress so far: I still do not have even one bit of information that is actually content. I have almost 20 pages of rambling notes, but no content. There is always tomorrow.

September 20, 2006

This will be the thrid time that I have written this post. (I am an idiot) It gets shorter each time. The last few days have consisted of identifying entry behaviors and subordinate skills. I hope to write the performance objectives tonight, and start construction content this weekend. I had forgotten how long this takes to do. As time goes on I hope to get faster and better.

Tom

Design Journal 9/18/06

Today I had the realization that I had almost forgotten everything that this program is trying to teach me. I sat down and just started to create instruction. I was into it about an hour when I realized that I was not applying anything I had learned. I decided to go back and look at my books and refresh myself as to how to go about actually creating instruction. After a short search I soon came across our favorite book, "The Systematic Design of Instruction". I really liked this book; it was very helpful to me. I have again started developing instruction, except that know I am actually creating my goals first. So to make a long story short, tonight I worked on hammering out the exact learning goals that I want to use to create my first unit of instruction. With these in hand, I can now move on to the next steps.

Lesson learned- All that we have learned so far is actually VERY useful, and really not to hard to follow.

Actual progress- very little when it comes to useable product, but tons when it comes to research and development.