Instructional Design Lessons Learned

After completing my first draft of a Performance Analysis, an instructional design stepping stone, I realized that although teachers create lessons every day in some form or another, they may not be placing enough emphasis on the needs of their audience, the students. The audience is the most critical part of the analysis; if the instruction is not designed to meet each needs, the instruction will be ineffective at best. I took too much for granted when I started my analysis and realized much later that I had not listened carefully and I had not thoroughly investigated the needs of my audience.

As I continue to work toward the completion of my analysis report and I start building objectives and assessments, I will be careful to consider the needs of every individual as well as the needs of the environment, creating/developing the best instruction for all involved.

What Could be more Exciting.....

What could be more exciting for a child than to see his/her own work displayed on the web. With the simplicity of Google Pages, teachers now have the opportunity to create a classroom web site and post student work, daily assignments, student awards, parent announcement...the list is endless... Monthly newsletters can be posted and archived so that parents be involved in their child's education. What about a calendar? Go for it!

What a great way to communicate with parents and community members while you celebrate day to day activites with your students.

Speaking of Engaging Students.....

Well, this student is really engaged... Here I am in beautiful Maui, Hawaii and it's 11pm and I am playing on my Blog site. I love my new Google Tools. I am most impressed with GoogleDocs, especially the ability to share your documents with others. Google Page Creator is so easy, it's a great tool for teachers to create their own web sites to post class assignments and share information. The chat session in my Gmail account is really fun when I am collaborating with my technology friends.

Engaged Students

Have you ever noticed how excited students are about learning when technology is involved? They are engaged and motivated; they actually look forward to attending school each day. Even the most reluctant children get involved when technology is part of the learning process. ELD and Special Education students do especially well when technology is integrated into their daily lessons plans.

Then what is everyone waiting for?