I have learned so much so far on my journey through this program and this is only the beginning. Entering the program my biggest want to know focused primarily around engagement. The designs, models and authors have given me so much insight and ideas on how to grab the interest by activating background knowledge/thinking of my learners and how keep their attention through accommodating their individual thinking process with helpful visual and/or technology tools and offering plenty of support to gain students confidence and celebrate their victories.
When I think of SITE Model and it's goals on how to design instruction for my learners and myself as a learner one thing that inspired me was the comparison of literacy vs. mediacy. It discusses reading to learn rather than learning to read. I think I often get caught up with my main objective being my students have to leave the first grade knowing how to read which is very important but there is so much more than that. Through my experiences it is just as equally important to teach students reading is a part of the learning process to help them gather so much more valuable information. I teach them reading is their pathway to getting their brains smarter!
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When creating a resource to share with others a few obstacles come to mind that I might need to address. From our reading of Dervin, Baggio and Clark there are many factors to consider. My DQ askes, "Does implementation of a 21st century inclusive design reduce disruptive behavior?." If my audience cannot relate to the issue of what my resource is trying to help, they do not have any background knowledge and there goes my buy in. I've lost my audience already. If my resource does not apply to them I don't have their interest which could be a potential problem. To address this problem I would need to give some sort of scenario with a demonstration or a movie clip to reel them in and get the wheels turning.
Another potential problem could be maybe they have this issue as well but it's not what their focus is. They might not really care or want to know more about it. In this case I would need to make it personable. I could provide data and have personal testimonies of other teachers to gain sympathy for others to see a concern. Lastly I learned the way the information is presented is very important as well. You can loose your audience if your presentation is too wordy or visually unappealing. The strategies to make information received long-term Dervin:
* sense-making can be defined as making sense of what people do in their everyday experiences * discontinuity is the fundamental aspect of reality * sense-making focuses on behavior * perceptual filters determine how you see people/things based on your values/beliefs * the "gap" is the moment where an individual focuses on a method to cross the "bridge" or barrier * external conditions(i.e. economic class, income and education) minimize creating new responses * there have been more than 40 different sense-making studies to date Baggio: * the brain works in patterns * learning has 3 influences: 1. prior knowledge- NAP(neuro-associative pathways are familiar roads in the brain) 2. context-provides relevance/significance/importance 3. expectations-what we imagine to be true or likely to happen * about 85% of people are visual learners * visual design must not overshadow the context Clark: * employees are ineffectively trained for workforce causing loss of productivity * ISD-( Instructional Systems Design) training that produces learning outcomes * four ingredients of instruction: 1. information 2. performance outcome 3. instructional methods 4. instructional media * in 1998 60 billion was spent on training * structured lessons have four major sections: 1. introduction 2. knowledge needed 3. major task of lesson 4. summary The link above will take you to the visual I found represents sense making methodology. I am very appreciative to the fact we were given fair warning about the dense content of this paper. Like recommended I printed it out and had my highlighter, colored pen, sticky note pad and google dictionary ready. I used a close reading strategy that I believe was a combination of various kinds I've come across over the years. With the highlighter I highlighted things that were interesting to me and I wanted to now more about and I used a colored pen to underline repeated or similar ideas and the sticky notes were used to write out the definitions to the words I didn't know.
When reading through the paper I tried to look for a common theme or something that kept being repeated and I noticed even though it was slightly restated a little different each time, the steps of what sense-making is and how a person begins to go through the process was the same. After I digested what the 25 pages were about and what I was looking for like how different methods can be used to conduct studies and seeing each study discussed time-line and questions it began to come together. What I basically got from Dervin was the sense-making methodology is the way individuals deal with a situation by identifying the "gap",(the problem or barrier) finding a "bridge"(using a resource) and then going on to get the answers they need to make a decision about the initial situation(solve the problem). This paper and the more than 40 studies done to date are important because they provide insight on what people struggle with or want to know or need information about and if researchers, doctors, lawyers, law enforcement, teachers, etc are aware of these human behaviors in sense-making they can become the resource to bridge to help positive human life experiences. If I were going to teach this to a high schooler it would definitely take place over at least a weeks time period. I would use a Cognitive Dictionary to help with understanding new and difficult vocabulary and have the students view related images because the content is so word heavy to explain ideas. I also think less teacher talk and more student led-discussions would be more effective. |