5130: More Slide:ology

I just finished the 2nd section of reading in Slide:ology, and while I thought there were some great ideas and still enjoyed the book, I am feeling a bit overwhelmed...maybe a lot overwhelmed. The concepts in the book seem so simple, but I have a tough time knowing where to start and how to change my presentations. I am mostly referring to our Presentation Prowess project for IT-5130. I have an idea of what I want to do and how I want to progress from Point A to Point B by getting people emotionally involved and leading them to have an attitude change. The problem is, I don't know if what I have put together so far is all that good or if it is just another boring presentation. I am trying to use the different concepts from the book and from what we have discussed in class. I just don't know if I am using them right or effectively. I spent a lot of time watching the example slideshows, and I think I was able to take a few ideas away (like using whitespace, different placement of font and font sizes for effect, different types of pictures and word/thought bubbles). I suppose I came here more to vent than to summarize what I have read. I think I'll head back to the drawing board and work up some more ideas. After all, Nancy Duarte says that it's important to come up with many many ideas and go from there. I just hope I can use all that I'm learning and make a great presentation.

5130: Slide:ology

I just finished the first half of Nancy Duarte’s Slide:ology and must admit that as much as Edward Tufte depressed me about PowerPoint, I feel that encouraged about it now. Not just PowerPoint, but visual presentations in general. I believe there is a lot to be said for giving learners information in several different ways, but these ways have to be used appropriately to be effective.

I read that Nancy chose the title Slide:ology because the word “ideology” is embedded in it. I thought that was very clever and makes sense with what her book presents. She takes the approach that it is not difficult to improve a presentation. It may take a lot more time, but it can be done. With lots of brainstorming and simplifying, a presenter can reach his audience much better.

There are a couple of things that stood out in the reading. She says on page 78 that “Too often, information loses its impact- and presenters risk losing their audiences- because it isn’t expressed as effectively as it could be.” I think this was Tufte’s main point, but I like how Nancy puts it in a way that does not altogether throw out a medium as a presentation tool. Another was "taking more time to think through a concept can yield clearer meaning" (p. 60). If I process all the way through a concept, chances are I will be better able to present it clearly.

So now I am in the process of figuring out what to do for the next big assignment to show I “get it.” The idea is to make a slide presentation that speaks for itself and actually teaches something (rather than just gives information). There are several topics I am exploring using and want to make something that I can pass on to my students at school. The big idea is to cause an attitude change. To make them want to do something after seeing the presentation. It is more than taking information and throwing it on a bunch of slides. I want to use the design techniques Nancy Duarte talks about, combined with what I’ve learned about cognition and psychology, and really make a presentation that stands out and stands on its own.

Nancy Duarte herself sounds like a very interesting person. Here is a quick link to a blog that contains an interview with Duarte about the book: http://fyi.oreilly.com/2008/08/nancy-duarte-on-slideology.html. And from www.duarte.com, regarding Nancy: “I’m a conquistador who liberates the undiscovered, sets boundaries for safe play, and builds fortresses where dreams can be realized. I create, protect, and conquer the future with extreme respect and reverence for the past.”

5650: Week 5 - Learner-Centered

This week I read an article by Barbara L. McCombs and Donna Vakili entitled A Learner-Centered Framework for E-Learning. This article was based around the idea of making sure elearning is learner-centered, and it can be made so by following certain principles. In the article they said that changes in 21st-century education “alters the purpose of education to that of helping learners communicate with others, find relevant and accurate information for the task at hand, and be colearners and partners with teachers and peers in diverse settings and learning communities that go beyond school walls” (p.1582). Learners are expected to be more involved in what they learn and how, so there comes a need to motivate them to take responsibility for their learning. They say that learner-centered is more of a dual focus on the learner himself with a focus on learning. This goes a long way from the idea of students sitting passively in a classroom taking in information. Now it is important to research how new technology and new methods of teaching and learning can be implemented to help students achieve their highest potential.

A big part of what the article talks about is the social aspect. I think this is an important point and have noticed how helpful it has been while taking online courses to be able to discuss ideas and projects with peers. It feels less isolated to have classmates there and to be able to communicate via email or eCollege (or even tools like Twitter) with the professor to get help and guidance. Having this support system can be a great motivator for students. McCombes and Vakili say that “research also shows that learning is enhanced in contexts where learners have supportive relationships, have a sense of ownership and control over the learning process, and can learn with and from each other in safe and trusting learning environments” (p.1586).

Towards the end of the article there is a list of principals and ideas for making elearning more effective and learner-centered. One that I found jumped out was under the motivational and affective factors. It says to “avoid the assumption that online learners are those who prefer less personal contact with instructors, are independent learners, have high motivation to learn, are self-disciplined, and have high personal self-efficacy; this assumption is not warranted for a growing number of students” (p.1592). When designing elearning it is most definitely important to remember who the students are and how they actually work so that the program can be more effective and serve its purpose well.

5130: Mayer, Medina, Phluff?

As I read through our reading in Mayer’s Multi-Media Learning this week, I struggled with some of the ideas he presented. This was because they seemed directly opposed to some ideas that really struck a chord with me in the Medina readings. The idea I am talking about is using pictures, sounds, and stories to enhance learning. Now I was excited about reading Medina’s work because he talked about the idea of adding “handles” so students could retrieve the information from their brains easier if it was encoded in more than one mode. When I got to Chapter 7 in Mayer, he shared studies showing that additional graphics, sounds or stories actually detracted from student learning both in retention and transfer tests. What? These two ideas seemed so opposed to each other. One reason I liked reading Medina is that he uses stories to get the ideas across. Well, the more I thought about it and after reading the discussion on it in the eCollege shell, it is making a little more sense to me now. The idea of adding handles and ways to get the information is to use actual relevant stories and pictures. Mayer used an example of talking about how lightning works and having a story of people getting injured by lightning. While I can see where a connection could be drawn, the story added unnecessary details that he said could cause the students to link information about the causes of lightning to a framework where people get injured by lightning. So the point is to keep the graphics and other information relevant to the actual information being learned. And as for more “handles,” adding the graphics showing air moving and particles being charged along with the text describing what is happening will give students verbal and pictoral representations that they can draw upon to remember the information. As Joni says, it is Tufte’s phluff. You don’t want to add extra stuff that will get in the way of learning rather than enhance it.

5130: Twitter

Twitter. The site says it is “is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?.”

It is pretty easy to add in an update and see what somebody else is up to, but it almost seems too simple. After using other social networking sites and checking out programs like Facebook and MySpace, I think Twitter might not have enough. Enough what? Enough ways to talk to people and share ideas, pictures, and personalities. I like to be able to see who this person is and what they are interested in besides reading a quick update that they are watching TV. Would this have a possibility as a learning tool? I can see how it might be useful to sign up and have a whole class also sign up so if they had quick questions about an assignment, they could ask and get a quick response. But that would involve making sure to log in consistently and check messages outside of regular means such as email or the eCollege shell or Blackboard, whatever the class may use. So overall, while I do think Twitter is cool and has some neat uses, I don’t see it as something I would use longterm.

5650: Week 4 - Team

This week’s reading was on Badrul H. Khan’s The People-Process-Product Continuum in E-Learning: The E-Learning P3 Model. This article was interesting to me mostly because throughout the first year of the ILT program we worked individually or in small groups to develop eLearning materials. The article discusses the many different people that could actually be involved to complete all the tasks in designing eLearning through the different steps in the process. So it is good to think about a whole team doing this work together and how all the parts come together with teamwork. While it can be nice to be able to make the decisions and do the work single-handedly, having a team to bounce ideas off of and to coordinate deadlines, content, and other ideas could be very useful.

Here is a quick recap of the process and who might be involved:

1. Planning – director, manager, instructional designer
2. Design – research and design coordinator, design team
3. Producation – course integrator, programmer, graphic artist, multimedia developer, photographer/videographer, editor, learning objects specialist, and quality assurance person
4. Evaluation – instructional designer, interface designer, students, content experts
5. Dellivery and Maintenance – systems administrator, server/database programmer, Webmaster
6. Instruction stage – course coordinator, instructor, tutor, course facilitator, discussion moderator, technical support, librarian, counselor, customer service, registration and administrative staff
7. Marketing – market researchers, salespeople

Overall I think reading through all this broadens the picture of the scope of eLearning design that I have in my mind.

5130: Brain Rules!

I really enjoyed reading our chapters from John Medina’s Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School. First, his style of writing and explaining things was very appealing. Medina uses various story-like examples to explain the principles he is presenting. One that stuck with me was the example of him as a boy walking into a store where the front door had several handles at different heights so taller or shorter people could get in with ease. He used this example to explain the idea of putting information into our brains with several “handles” so it can be recalled with ease. Each way you put the information in puts another handle on the door for later retrieval. I try to use this in my classroom by giving students visuals as they listen to my lectures or give them various other assignments, but this reading has helped me want to be very conscious of how I try to put the information into their brains so they learn it better.

5650: RSS Feed Update

I figured out the RSS feed! I had signed up on Google Reader last time, which was maybe a year ago but feels like forever. The way I remembered this was by stumbling upon this YouTube tutorial video on RSS that we had watched in that class: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0klgLsSxGsU. It is very helpful and got me back on track – I think!

Next task I think will be learning how to put pictures in the blog. This one seems pretty plain, and I have really enjoyed looking through the blogs of other classmates who seem to be a lot more creative.

5650: Using Blog and RSS Feeds

This week our reading for IT-5650 was an article by Richard E. West, Geoff Wright, Bruce Gabbitas, and Charles R. Graham entitled Reflections from the Introduction of blogs and RSS Feeds into a Preservice Instructional Technology Course. This article was interesting to me because it talked about the use of blogs in teacher technology courses…but the thing that stuck out most to me was the difficulty they found students had with the technology itself, specifically the RSS feeds. The reason this struck a chord with me is because just last week I was trying for the 2nd time to figure out how to set up RSS feeds. I know we set it up before as part of one of the previous ILT classes in the certificate program, and I have the little RSS icon on my browser, but I have no idea now how to request (?? Is request even right??) a feed. I tried to link a blog I was interested in, but on any other page when I click on the RSS button, it does not take me to that blog. I am sure this is silly information for more experienced bloggers and RSS feeders, but I will be spending my time on Google looking for articles on how to set this up right. I know I had it at one point, but clearly it is not like riding a bicycle. This is good to keep in mind when using technology in my classroom. I want my students to learn new things and things that are useful to them, but I need to make sure they do not walk away from the experience more confused and frustrated than before.

5130: Discovering Psychology

I just finished watching Dr. Phillip Zimbardo’s videos on Discovering Psychology for IT-5130. I think my wife was happy to sit down and watch a little with me since she majored in psychology and knew much of the information, but I did end up enjoying the videos myself. I liked the use of visual examples to help explain the concepts, and they were explained in a way that made them very interesting. But how could the brain not be interesting? Here are some quick notes of some key points I jotted down and wanted to keep here so I have them handy:

From the Sensation and Perception video:

• We have millions of sensory receptors throughout the body and each receptor picks up a certain type of energy (i.e. light or sound waves) and sends the information to the hypothalamus to be redistributed
• There is a distil stimulus – the thing being perceived, the actual thing – and a proxil stimulus – the image displayed on the retina. These can be different!
• Adaptation example – football player puts on goggles that make the receiver appear 20 degrees to the side, he will miss at first but then adapt to the perception. When goggles are removed he will miss again until he adapts back.
• Perceptual constancy = size, shape, brightness, etc. of an object appears to remain the same even when there are extreme variations in the image it presents (ie. if a shadow falls on our paper, we know the paper itself did not just get darker).

From Remembering and Forgetting:

• Experts estimate the brain can store 100 trillion bits of information!
• Memory – is affected by how much you concentrate and rehearse, the context in which you learn something, context in which you recall it, motivation, physical state and biological condition, and interference.
• 1960s – computer was used to represent memory, depicted the mind as an information processor. Information is encoded, stored and retained, then later retrieved.
• Constructive process of remembering = we put things together as a consistent memory, even filling in missing information.
• How and what you remember is determined by who you are and what you already know.
• When something is remembered, there is a corresponding change in the brain.
• Alzheimers studies –show problems with operant conditioning long before neurological testing of declarative memory shows problems. Has to do with acetylcholine neurotransmitters being blocked by scopolamine.

From Cognitive Processes:

• Information processing approach = valuable because it analyzes cognitive processes as a sequence of ordered stages – these stages can be traced as information flows through the brain.
• A central operating principal of the mind that cognitive psychologists study is our ability to form mental representations of the external world.
  o We perceive things like the letter “A” even in different forms, we still see it is the same letter.
  o We form categories of related things in our mind – these are called concepts. We store concepts by having a representation of the most typical representation of a category (called a prototype)
  o Schemas – we can infer things that belong in a schema so we can react to things.
• We don’t process a problem in a linear way like a computer but instead process it according to what it means to us.