After reading Siemens’ “Questions I’m no Longer Asking,” I spent the next week pondering my own questions from the entrance of my instructional design and technology program. For example, walking into class the first night, I was looking for the girl named ADDIE. (Obviously, I didn’t find her.) Since then, I have found answers to these questions. A few of [...]

When I began my first year of teaching, I had never completed a single course in the field of education. I had graduated with a degree in Business Administration and majored in Marketing. My degree and business experience helped me land a job teaching Marketing Education for a high school that was unable to find a certified teacher. (A word of warning, I don’t recommend this particular path into a teaching career for the faint of heart!) …

It’s interesting to me how little time we devote in schools to teaching critical thinking. Lots of folks seem to think it’s important (for example, funders like NSF, multiple consumer and or/business groups’ reporting on what schools should do, professional organizations like ISTE, AECT, AERA, and NRC), but that does not seem to translate into a tangible focus in schools on helping learners acquire such skills.

by Jongpil Cheon

The faculty members in instructional technology program were invited to visit some classrooms by a technology support team of a school district. All the classes we visited in two elementary schools, one middle school and one high school were using a Smartboard and clickers (classroom response system). In the discussion session, the main request from the technology support team was that these tools should be in pre-service teacher curriculum.

I have studied educational technology for over 20 years; my work has focused primarily on teachers’ use of technology for teaching, learning, and professional enhancement.  Overall, we have always seen wonderful pockets of projects and ideas that are making a difference but we have not really seen the dramatic, large scale implementations that some of us have hoped for!  Recently, I reread The National Education Technology Plan (http://www.nationaledtechplan.org/), released by the U.S. Department of Education in January 2005, and I was struck that its first action step is to “strengthen leadership.”

Increasingly social networks are being used in business, education and by non-profit groups. Which social networks do you use? Which one is your favorite? Why is it your favorite? How should educators be using these networks? How can these networks be used in the classroom? What kinds of student projects could be done for course credit?

We’ve all seen it: The training material that is a jumbled mess of mismatched graphics, hard-to-read text and no sense of cohesion whatsoever. What good is the content if the learner needs a decoder ring to decipher it? Therefore, I offer up my Top 11 List of Style.

by Paul Ayers

Let’s consider for a moment a formal definition put forth by Alan J. Cann for Personal Learning Environments (PLEs). A PLE is: a system that helps learners take control of and manage their own learning. This includes providing support for learners to set their own learning goals, manage their learning, manage both content and process, and communicate with others in the process of learning.

by Charles B. Hodges

I work in an environment where thousands of learners access web-based learning materials daily. Web-based learning is a major topic of research and discussion in the professional organizations to which I belong. I teach graduate-level instructional design courses, and I will soon be involved with undergraduate-level technology integration courses. Exploring the endless stream of new Web 2.0 tools that emerge and imagining (or reading in my friends’ blogs) how these might be used to facilitate learning is something I enjoy. Recently, I have found myself considering ethical issues surrounding all of these interests

by Elizabeth Boling

Years ago when I read Design for the Real World (Papanek, 1973), I was not anticipating ending up in a design field where the issues he championed would actually apply to my work. Over time, however, I find my thoughts returning insistently to the core of his message – most trained designers end up plying their trade to produce more stuff (or more experiences) for people who already have enough (or people who have too much!)