Is learning linear?

Photo taken by: keithcarver.
On the first day of class, I said that people don’t learn linearly and thus I wouldn’t be teaching that way. Of course, I didn’t mean that I thought we should carry on our scholastic dialogue in the manner of an absurdist play. What does the term linearity suggest? If learning isn’t linear, what shape might it be? What have we read that offers insight into how people process information?Keep this idea of linearity in mind as you read Ch2 & 3 of Freedman for this week.

“Interactivity” -Synthesis of today’s class

The transformation of the PTA presentation was phenomenal. It was a completely different presentation! That group’s use of the first organizing slide was what I think some of you were talking about when you talk about using PowerPoint as notecards or to organize information.

Now was it heart-stopping innovative design? Maybe not so much. The medium of PowerPoint has a certain look and feel and for the most part people use it as a functional sort of thing, to provide visual back-up for their text.

The other group focused in on a more micro-level view and reorganized a slide of information. They were limited by the fact that they didn’t have a content expert on their team, which made their whole process different. They really cleaned up the slide, limited the number of images, grouped related information proximally, and improved the visibility of the most salient information. Their work made me question a lot of stuff that was on the slide and what the content of the slide was really trying to say. After they pared it down, it didn’t seem like the information being shared got down to the meat of anything important–which was not the group’s fault. But it did reveal how all that text and imagery can make a presentation look full, when it is really quite empty.
After the class discussion today—when do you think it would be appropriate to use PowerPoint? When is it inappropriate? How much information do you think a typical audience retains from a PowerPoint presentation?

As a final note, creating hands-on/minds-on activities is great. It requires learners to engage with the material. As Angela noted in regards to Dale’s Cone of Experience, it becomes more probable that the learners will retain the information and be able to apply it later on.  It also takes more time than you ever imagine it will.  Lots of time! However, it is time well invested.

More on PowerPoint

Elizabeth’s post on PowerPoint reminded me that I wanted to point those of you who never get tired of reading in the direction of a recent blog post by a colleague of mine entitled, “Why PowerPoint is Evil“

Keep in mind that I will be disappointed if you take either this blog post or the Tufte article as some kind of indication that you can just forget about using PowerPoint because clearly it’s useless. Who can think of some perfectly valid reasons why you would use it…?

Changing your WordPress template

I’ve noticed some of you have changed your template, and others have not gotten to that yet. It is not obligatory for you to do, but in case you haven’t done it because you aren’t sure how, here’s a quick tutorial:

Changing your wordpress template 

Following up the copyright discussion

Before I started the path to become an instructional designer, I never worried too much about copyright. If you are teaching in a classroom, you can excuse most anything as “fair use” because the odds are that no one is going to catch you. On the other hand, once one starts delving into the world of digital media for instructional use, there is no excuse not to be at least rudimentarily familiar with the essential elements of copyright law as it pertains to education.

That being said, there is a LOT to understand about copyright, and generally speaking, it is not just about memorizing the rules and following them. There is a little bit of analysis involved, as the four factors for fair use (nice alliteration) demonstrates. Of course, if this was your first time discussion copyright, it might have been very confusing, but in future conversations, you will continue to build on your understanding.

I get a new perspective every time the topic is discussed, and after I left class, I was thinking about some of the issues that came up. Nathan- your WWJBD theme–isn’t that parody? Angela-I thought about the landscaping architecture issue and I suddenly saw your perspective too—you paid for the plans, why can’t you use them as you wish. When your friend ordered them, she must have signed off on that and it didn’t seem important til you had the plans in hand and realized that you had to use that company. I did say that we all have a choice, and we do to some extent. At the same time, as we saw with your student handbook, sometimes our choices with our intellectual property are bound up with complicated choices, and often the limitations of our choices as it relates to our intellectual property is also limited by our power within the situation.

It is sobering to think that an institution, teacher, and students could all be liable when it comes to a copyright offense. At the same time, you are more empowered to make decisions if you know all the parameters involved and can reason out your choices. It made me glad that I hadn’t required you to post your appropriated images on your site after that discussion, but I don’t think you would run into trouble for this assignment either.

 As an FYI, the code to reference an image on another site is this:

<a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/39151655@N00/191427110/“>
<img src=”http://static.flickr.com/52/191427110_a7a3683b93_m.jpg” width=”221″ height=”240″ alt=”snaggle!” /></a>

The first line creates a hyperlink to the original posting <a href…
The second line embed the image in your blog <img src…
To do this in your wordpress blog, you have to go to the html view (look at the menu above where you are typing and click the “html” button). If I do that and paste that text here, this is what happens:

When you’re doing this with your own photos, no problem whatsoever. If you do this with creative commons licensed-photos, give attribution. If you are doing this with copyrighted other photos, you are in a big amorphous gray area.

I hope the introduction of the creative commons movement is helpful and that everyone has a chance to review the visual explanation of what it is and how it works.

10 bucks says mondrian hates it

10_bucks_says_mondrian_hate

Originally uploaded by midquel.
All appropriated images used here are tagged at: http://del.icio.us/htillberg/appropriated_image

Response to Bridget

First, I enjoyed your post and agree that essentially you are correct. We do need to take responsibility to some extent and not be passive consumers of unintelligent drivel. But how?

I was surprised in class when someone said that television was one of the best inventions, particularly in its relationship to education. I don’t entirely disagree, but one of the inherent characteristics of the television experience is often (though not always) a degree of passivity. A television program can communicate something, but it doesn’t allow for dialogue. Further, it provides a provocative medium for spreading misinformation, which happens frequently.

So combining these two elements- people need to take responsibility in their role as audience and television as a one-way communicative tool–how does this inform your role as an educator?

Tutorials

As I mentioned in the first class, there is so much that we are going to want to cover in this course and a good use of our time together is not step-by-step tutorials. However, if you are unfamiliar with a program, looking at available tutorials can be a helpful part of your learning process, and certainly in class or outside of class feel free to ask me or your classmates how to do something. Chances are, one of us knows what you want to do.

Meanwhile, some places to look for guidance might be:
GIMP Tutorials (GIMP)

Good Tutorials (Photoshop)

Fireworks Tutorials 

Engaging/ed learners

People mentioned a lot of key factors that contribute to the learning process as a whole. We design instruction to try and control as many of these factors as possible to result in the type of learning we want to see happen. We create objectives that strive to articulate what we want people to know, what we think learners should get out of the experience. The instructional design process, as we discussed it today is all about US, the educators.

How do we make it about the students, besides just stipulating what the learners will get out of the process? How do we make it interactive (when I use interactive, I will always use it to mean engaging students with each other)? How do we give students control over their learning?