European colonization of the Americas

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For my idea for a lesson that would incorporate the use of a map, I created a map using Google Maps for my K-12 class of History. My map is about European colonization of the Americas. This map describes the routes followed by European colonists and some relevant facts of that history period. This a lesson in form of an interactive lecture in which I’ll explain to the learners different history facts about the European Colonization  of the Americas, people and places involved and the relevance  of this history period to the world today. 

The students will be able to see the different routs taken by the expeditionist , the first places discovered and the time period. The learners can make question and interact with the teacher while they are listening to the interactive lecture.          

HPI and Podcasting

Reflection

            Achieve, through people, increasingly successful accomplishments that are valued by all organizational stakeholders (p.35). This is the vision of the Human Performance Improvement that we find in the chapter 14 of the Trends and Issues book. I can relate this vision to my professional practice because as a teacher I hope to achieve successful accomplishments through my students, when my students make a good performance that’s an achievement for me and all the educational stakeholders.

            Human Performance Improvement involves the behaviorism approach that I constantly use in my professional practice. Behavior is individual activity whereas the outcomes of behavior are the ways in which the behaving individual’s environment is somehow different as a result of his or her behavior (p.136), to stimulate (reward/punishment) my students to achieve the desired results is an important part of my instructional design.

            I can see many opportunities where the ideas developed in this chapter could help me in my practice. For example: the Gilbert’s Behavior Engineering Model. Although this model is not intended for k-12 education the behaviorism approach in it, can be very helpful for my practice. In the model, we can see the stimulus as a relevant and frequent feedback on adequacy of performance, the response as organize work processes, and the consequences for poor performance.  The part of the stimulus in the model can help my students to be more involved in the class, through feedback, reward or punish depending on their behavior.

Podcast:
 

Grammar girl: Quick and dirty tips for better writing

This is a very useful podcast about good grammar and writing, and the author is very charismatic. The duration of the podcast is 8 minutes.

Mignon Fogarty is the host of Grammar Girl and founder of Quick and Dirty Tips.  Mignon was a magazine and technical writer, and an entrepreneur.  Mignon has a B.A. in English from the University of Washington in Seattle and an M.S. in biology from Stanford University.

The podcast episode that I chose is called: Where do I use commas?  This episode has the next segments:

Commas: Are There Firm Rules or Just Guidelines?

In this segment the author talks about the different uses of the comma, and what makes them confusing.

Don’t Put a Comma between a Subject and Its Verb:

This segment explain why you should not put a Comma between a Subject and Its Verb

Pauses Do Not Equal Commas:

Here the author explain the myth of putting a comma everywhere we pause

Restrictive and Nonrestrictive Appositives:

Here she gives us an easy example to help us remember the difference between restrictive and nonrestrictive appositives.

Here is a link to the podcast: http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/where-do-i-use-commas.aspx

Niagara Falls

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Stressed Students' Gallery

Changing Education Paradigms

This a very interesting short video about the Paradigms in the Education System. This RSA Animate was adapted from a talk given at the RSA by Sir Ken Robinson.

A History of Instructional Design and Technology

This is the link to my photobucket:  http://s1327.beta.photobucket.com/user/ilainnafulgenci/media/CIMG0261_zps5cb0003e.jpg.html?sort=3&o=10

Provide a whole class with laptops and wireless internet service access 24 hours a day, every day of the week seems like a very good idea, but the reality is other. As we have seen in the chapter three of ‘Trends and Issues in Instructional Design and Technology’ the technology innovations along the years had not been the solution to the educational problems. As we have seen in the History of Instructional Design and Technology; computers have not fulfilled the prediction made in the 1980s, which say that computers would revolutionize instruction.

In this specific case (providing teachers and students with 24/7 access to laptops, curriculum materials, and wireless internet services) had little effect in the manner in which instruction was presented in the teacher’s classrooms. These results may be due to three possible factors: 1) Teachers resistance to change, 2) The cost associated with purchasing and maintaining these technologies, and 3) The lack of adequate guidance to the teachers.

The first reason why the project had very little effect on the teachers’ instructional practice was the teachers’ resistance to change. Over the time we have seen that teachers are afraid to change, afraid to leave their comfort zone and dive into new areas and try different things related particularly with media and technology issues, for these reasons they resist change specially top-down. The second reason is the cost associated with purchasing and maintaining these technologies. This is a very serious problem because once made ​​the investment in hardware and software is very important to know how to give proper maintenance or such investment may be lost easily, computers require specialized maintenance that teachers are not prepared to provide most of the time. The unconscious manipulation by some students help make the problem worse, so the cost associated with the purchase of laptops increases significantly because they have to pay technicians to provide adequate maintenance of the systems and medias.

The third reason is the lack of adequate guidance in how integrates this technology into their instructional practices. Teachers often are in the position of not being well trained in the use of some method or technology, this is a problem of great proportions since is not very useful to have the means but not master the method. What can they do with laptop and 24/7 wireless if they can’t integrate these tool into their lessons properly?

Some strategies that could have helped this project to be successful could have been the development of teaching guides for the integration of these technologies into their lesson plans. If teachers had had an adequate preparation, probably they would not have been afraid of change and the unknown. Also With proper training technical problems educators could have given basic maintenance to the laptop units and thus save on the costs of technician support.