The Lint Trap.

  This semester has been a bit rough re-acclimating myself to vocabulary that has not been in the front of my mind for 20 years. This week brought back many words that were buried deep down in my long-term memory. My Psychology of Human Learning professor would be proud to know she did force us to memorize definitions for nothing.  What I find most helpful to consider is how all the theories of learning piece together. Each theory adds another piece to the puzzle. Using them on their own would leave learners lacking on various levels. A recent campfire conversation with friends revolved around their 1 st graders math homework and the concept behind common core math. One of the mom’s, an early childhood educator herself, was a bit frustrated with the amount of higher-level thinking required by her daughter before she’d even begun to learn math facts. Another mom was frustrated with the abundance of strategies being taught to her son. She said having different strategies is g...

 What is Learning? Learning is moving from a state of ignorance to understanding and incompetence to a state of skillfulness, or at least gaining more skillfulness (or knowledge) than where one began.   I am sure I learned about behaviorism in my undergrad program. I would certainly not have been able to name it in more recent years. After reading this week, my short definition of behaviorism is how we behave, why we behave in those ways and how we alter those behaviors.   Reading through Driscoll’s article I chuckled at myself—thinking about my behaviors in regards to this particular course and how I need to make some modifications so I can be successful, but let’s put self-reflection to the side. A good majority of my hands-on experience with behavior management came in the form of being a paraprofessional in an upper elementary special education class for kids with severe physical and cognitive disabilities. Our days were filled with behavior management. “Put sim...

 As I look back through my notes and highlights from this week’s readings, the theme is pretty simple—a process is helpful for instructional designers but must not be held so high to lose the purposes behind the process. The variables associated with student learning are infinite and thus there is no perfect step by step process that can accommodate for all those variables. There are a few big picture variables that caught my attention. Instruction vs learning. In Chapter 1 of Designing effective instruction, Morrison describes some of the benefits of instructional design to P-12 education, “there are numerous occasions in which the need for teacher-developed materials—drill-and-practice exercises, remedial lessons, problem-based lessons, or even full-fledged instructional units—arises” (p 4). I have previously referenced my experiences as an outdoor/experiential education facilitator and other atypical roles in education. I was also a classroom teacher for a couple years f...

So far I have just taken a couple of classes within IST. I started in a program that was more a UX design focus and realized I cared more about the instructional piece and made the switch. I have struggled to understand just what Instructional Systems Technology means and how to explain it to those inquiring about what I am studying. After reading this week, I’m more convinced trying to define and explain it to anyone so they will understand what I am doing is not likely to happen! The field is far larger and more inclusive than I expected. Reiser’s historical account of the field, “What field did you say you were in?” is helpful in understanding where we have been and how we arrived where we are now. A few things caught my attention from this reading and relate to my prior experiences. I am personally stuck on the very early definitions of the field. “Early definitions of the field of instructional technology focused on instructional media—the physical means via which instruction is p...