Week 8 - Reflection

Reiser and Dempsey presented a few different forms of instructional design/technology that I believe would be useful where I teach school. The first is technology-based training delivery. In the past few years I have been through a few different types of training that implemented through the internet. I believe this is an effective use of training personnel, time, and resources. Also, a nice benefit of training through the internet allows the trainee to be able to receive training according to their own schedule. The training I received allowed me to complete the sessions in a reasonable amount of time; I also received instant feedback which was beneficial to my learning and application of the training I received.

The second form of ID/T that I think is useful in business is globalized training. This form of training is most likely a great benefit to large companies that have employees in many different locations. For instance, one of my brothers and his wife both work for an oil/chemical company located in the midwest. They both have had jobs that have taken them all over the country and the world. Many times they receive or give training sessions that are online and occurring in more than one location at a time. If they were not able to conduct globalized training, the cost of the trainings and the amount of time needed to get every person trained would rise significantly.
I believe that technology-based training will be very useful in the years to come in the educational world. Many of us are already involved in receiving such training. The globalization of training is an idea that I believe can be implemented for educators if we want to share ideas with other people in the United States or across the world.

As far as the assignments that we have completed thus far, I have found all of them to be interesting. I love working with technology and the internet. I believe I have learned a great deal already and find the pacing to be very reasonable. I have been working on setting up a couple of wikis for two of my classes–information basis mostly– psychology-schoenborn.wikispaces.com and schoenbornenglish12.wikispaces.com. Actually, in two days another teacher and I are conducting a technology presentation; my portion is going to introduce my wikis. Then, we will be helping other teachers get started on their own. I am enjoying myself immensely.

A few of the projects I was a little bit intimated by at first but found myself able to get into them with little or no problem. I definitely am finding ways to incorporate some of what we have learned into teaching already. My favorites are wikis, bookmarking, and the photo site, but I think all of them will be useful for me in education. I love the fact that I am able to apply what I am learning so quickly. As my first course for the Masters in EDT, I believe it to be a good start.
I think all of the technology tools and skills we are learning are fantastic. However, I also believe we are learning through the way this course is set up–on-line learning and blogging. These are ideas I would love to utilize eventually with some of my future students.