The art of Instructional Design is as much of an art as the master pieces of Picasso or Monet. They are both things of beauty and both require talents that not everyone posses. It is a talent to be able to able to construct an activity that is fun yet primarily educational.
The method of Instructional Design allows us to take a seemingly monumental task and break it down into manageable pieces. A journey of a thousand miles begins with just one step.
I have spent the last year and a half putting the model of Instructional Design into practice. Friday was the culmination of the work I have put in over the last year and a half. This work has been in putting into place an Aviation Summer Camp for 8-12th grade students.
In the initial conception of the idea I did indeed "assess the needs to identify the goals." My mission statement was where I began. "Making Math and Science Relevant". In a notebook I wrote down what it would take to offer a Aviation Summer Camp. I identified my targeted student age by not only my knowledge level but also the other programs in the surrounding community that would either support my efforts or areas that were lacking that I could fill.
In conducting instructional analysis I not only analyzed the curriculum but evaluated resources in the form of support personnel and community involvement that could support the curriculum standards that I set. Finally deciding on performance objectives only after much research. Revision, development of assessment instrument,revision, develop instructional strategy, revision, all the way down to summative evaluation (oh yes and more revision). Summative evaluation for year 2010 of Aviation Summer Camp has begun and will be completed in the next few weeks. The formation of Aviation Summer Camp for 2011 has already begun and oh yes, did I mention revisions. It is a very gratifying feeling when a well thought out Instructional Design comes to full fruition.
Oh yes, and for the other portion identified in the title of this article Photo Sharing, I love it. We have had many different photo sharing programs over the years. All of our relatives (except for our own children) live out of state and we are only able to see them a few times a year. It is great to be able to share holiday and even ordinary day things with them through photo sharing software. In the realm of an educational use, my students and fellow instructors from Aviation Summer Camp are creating a web link of some sort to share photos that we took during camp. Much fun and learning was had by all. (and we got to fly too!)
Oshkosh Airventure camping
We all have the same amount of hours in a day. It's what we do with them that sets us apart.
4 comments:
I agree that making a lesson fun and educational can be a monumental task. ID really does break it down in small manageable pieces and gives you the ability to evaluate and fix.
Thanks, I end up revising every lesson plan I make because I always tweek it to the students I am teaching at the time.
I loved your analogy comparing a Picasso or Monet to Instructional Design methods. They do seem to monumental tasks to create the design/lesson plan and the key is evaluate and revise. I know I have had to change everything I planned as I went along to match the students I was working with.
Most of my family is not computer literate--I wish I could share photos as you do with your family. I have many of them on memory cards and cd's, but they don't understand. My brother got one of the digital photo fames from his son and daughter in-law for Christmas--they are such a great idea, but he can only watch the pictures they loaded on it as he doesn't know how to do it himself (and he's afraid to let me try as he thinks I'll wipe them all out). I can send both my daughters photos via e-mail, but it's not the same.
Margie
Isn't it great how this definition of instructional design can be used in so many facets of life. I like how you explained that it needs to be broken down into many different pieces. The key word for me that I saw was managable if it isn't broken down into pieces and everyone isn't on the same page the task will never get done. I am sure you ran into this with your project as well. Isn't it great when years of work come together into something great!!!!
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