Plugging away towards my capstone project, this week yielded a peak in clarity for me. Our assignment “DQ Prototype Initial Analysis” required just the right amount of synthesizing and motivation that navigated me towards a clearer understanding of where I’ve been, and how that experience is guiding my process as well as goal destination. Through the guiding outline of the DQ Prototype Initial Analysis, I was able to relate my project to Dervin, Clark, SITE Model, and Pebble in the Pond ISD Model. Just taking the time to process through and find connections from these resources to my work was very enlightening. Things began to make more sense when I realized that the SITE Model is actually the ideal model for my project because it brings the content to students through sociocultural subcontext of family, role models, siblings, and peers. The learning is integrated into the student’s environment in a way that it embeds itself into the values of the network. Learning the alphabet letter names and sounds means spending time with parents before bed, playing a game with an older buddy at the after school program, or figuring out how to beat the next level online with a big brother or sister. I also took a moment to discover that, as the SITE Model would predict, my goals are heavily embedded in the sociocultural subcontext of my life. To go a step further, Dervin’s work would even apply. All of my experiences growing up as a poor latina student in California have led me to this gap filling endeavor that I have constructed. Nearly every job I’ve had has focused on a similar population in some way or another. I really appreciated the steps in this assignment that required us to justify our work. It prompted me to think through some of the next steps in my project and do some further research to confirm that the direction I’m headed is a good one. Now I feel much better about where I am going and how it is all connecting!
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This week, as we read Baggio (ch 7-9), Clark (ch 3-6), I struggled with context. The richness and versatility of the content this week had me constantly rotating between three contexts: teaching students, teaching colleagues, and teaching through my capstone project. It is fantastic that these readings apply very well to each of these contexts. For now, I will focus on how the readings helped me to develop ideas around creating a product to share the work of my research and knowledge around my driving question and Capstone project: “How can we develop a network of support for our youngest learners in the early literacy achievement gap?” I felt that Clark gave the most detailed information on how to teach, while Baggio told us how things should look to our learners. So let's start with Clark. Clark:We learned from Clark about teaching procedures, concepts, facts, and processes.
Baggio:Baggio is great for thinking about how to “package” all the learning we want to present to our users. Once we have read Clark, we can process how it might look as we present it in a clean, consumable way for our users.
My application towards creating a resource to share my knowledge and research (Capstone): These readings helped me to consider different aspects of my project, and how I might design my presentation. For example, am I presenting a potential procedure for my learners to follow in order to achieve an impact on students in the early literacy achievement gap? If so, then I must be aware that Dervin says my learner will have a unique perspective as they seek to fill a "gap". I must take into consideration users' different levels of prior knowledge and experience as I plan my presentation. I must be sure to include proper visuals to support my user in understanding the process that I am proposing.
I will have many facts to share with my users (research and knowledge). How will I present this information? Clark mentions the use of reference resources when teaching facts. Perhaps rather than bogging down the user with too many facts or details, some of the content can be presented as reference resources that are accessible when the user wishes to explore them. These might be clickable text or image links to further information as desired. Since I tend to want to give as much information as possible, this would be a good way for me to remember that not all information is needed at once. Also, Clark mentions the use of mnemonic aids. It might be fun to work a mnemonic aid into my presentation to add interest and make it memorable. Clark also often mentions designing practice for users. While my project might not exactly offer practice for real life applications, I might consider including questions for the user to think about. For example, "Who are potential partners in your students' lives?" Another idea to help users apply the knowledge offered by my project might be to include a link to an online quiz or an invitation to follow a hashtag. Baggio inspired me to think about aligning my visuals to what I want to convey in my presentation: feelings, content or action. Perhaps I want my hook to convey feelings, my research and knowledge is my content, and action is the procedure or how-to. If I categorize these aspects of my project as such, my visuals can be better aligned to those goals. Then there's my new favorite Baggio mantra: "levity, brevity, and repetition!" I think the overall big picture to keep zooming out to is Dervin's perspective. As I design my project I need to continuously be aware that learners will all have different levels of education and experiences, values, motives and goals, as they approach the gap they seek to fill. From the Mind’s Eye of the User by Dervin
Upon rereading this text, a few points became clearer with the context of other readings (especially Clark). Here are my “aha” points:
Methodology and Its Methods:
The Visual Connection by Baggio (Ch 4-6) Baggio is such a nice read. I like this content because I have always felt that I am an extremely visual person--to the point that I’m almost anti-audio. I hate noisy environments and I rarely even listen to music. Silence is my favorite song! Key Points:
Develop Technical Training by Ruth Colvin Clark (Chapters 1 & 2) This reading almost felt like a blend of Baggio and Dervin. I think reading this helped me to connect to some of the ideas in Dervin with which I struggled. Key Points:
Instructional Systems Development goes like this:
Task analysis seems to have been done for us for years by our curriculum: accounting for unconscious competence--remembering to teach the tiniest steps that are not obvious to people who are already competent. I think teaching Kindergarten helps teachers develop the skill to pay attention to this. I always say that I think every teacher should have to spend some time teaching Kindergarten! Development: Sometimes I am grateful to have curriculum that has done all of this for us, because of the time it would take. Other times, I wish I could slow down and be creative. Lesson structure includes:
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