R/D4

Cindy Thelen
D/B4

There are some obvious concerns with incorporating photo sharing in the classroom. Many times students don’t think about the pictures they take and post. It could be an educator’s nightmare! Is there a way of filtering the photos? Perhaps an editing tool that the teacher could use? Maybe it just needs to be something that the teacher takes charge of and each picture has to be pre-approved before being photo shared.

Photo sharing would be a great way to display pictures taken of students’ art projects (not just from art class), classroom demonstrations, or field trips. Parents would enjoy seeing all of these, too. I could imagine my class creating a ‘Women and the Civil War’ collage of pictures. However, I assume I would have to be concerned about copyrights. Maybe copyrights wouldn’t be an issue if we weren’t actually publishing something, just sharing it. A collection of pictures from a field trip would remind students of the things they saw and learned about. It would be something to share with other classes, too. Pictures of students demonstrating something they learned could also be put on your photo share site. Parents that work would get a visual idea of what their child does in school.

I really enjoyed reading chapter two and the list of characteristics of instructional design: learner centered (with some individualized components), goal oriented (does it meet a need), focuses on meaningful performance (not just something fun to do), assumes outcomes can be measured in a reliable and valid way (information every teacher wants and needs), is empirical, iterative, and self-correcting (saving us from the dreaded pile of papers to correct), and typically is a team effort.

Several of the processes the authors described are similar to things I currently use when making lesson plans. I want my lesson plans to be learner centered and look for ways to incorporate differentiated instruction, meeting the individual needs of my students and directing the learning time to various learning styles. Of course, I want my students to meet certain goals and am always reminded that “if you aim at nothing, you usually get there”. I try to make my educational goal worthy of their time. I don’t want to waste my students’ time on busy work. I want them actively involved, inquiring, problem solving, and applying their knowledge. Measuring outcomes is an important part of the educational process, so not only the teacher, but the students, too, can see what they have learned. The immediacy of feedback is one of the essential strengths of technology. If students have mastered a goal, they can move on. If they are struggling, they can go back and review. One thing I rarely include in lesson plans is collaborative learning (team effort). I’ve always been afraid that one or two students would do the work, while others looked on. I think if I had a rubric for grading, I would be able to see who did what, so there would be consequences for slackers.