Hello there Professors and Friends,

Everything you can find in my Flash-based e-Portfolio, you can find here, at my website.  

I highly recommend using the website to navigate through the portfolio. Not only does the website lend itself better to large blocks of text, but it also includes several other projects I have worked on during  my tenure as a student at Cal State Los Angeles.

Cletus

Having taken Dr. Javeri’s EDIT 594 class, I already had a pretty strong idea of what HPT is and its usefulness in a variety of settings. I think it is a very solid system for both finding problems or performance gaps then seeking to alleviate them. I think the systematic approach that HPT offers is missing in a lot of areas, especially in education. I think the problem, unfortunately, is what happens when there are several gaps or worse, an overall disagreement between final goals and objectives?

I think HPT is great for problems where 1 or 2 gaps are defined and then closed. However, I think HPT struggles when there are several gaps. As an example, I will discuss the project where I performed a gap analysis and created a solution.

The English department at my school does not really talk to each other. While this could be a minor inconvenience, one problem that frequently arises is that sometimes certain teachers will use one novel in their class,
and that novel may be repeated later. I created a list of books by grade level that failed miserably. While I gathered data, and went through the steps of HPT I also had to recognize that some teachers simply did not want to take the time and effort to stay with the plan. Even though I may have implemented a solution, there was no way for me to enforce it. I had assumed that since it was a common complaint, everyone would be on board. I was wrong. What looked like one easy gap to fill, ended up being a lot deeper touching on subjects like encouraging motivation and cooperation.

I would definitely support the use of either electornic support systems of knowledge management systems. I believe that either system can be effective provided it is properly implemented. My greatest concern is that either one of these is used for a short time, then not updated, then abandoned, and finally forgotten about. To have either EPSS or KMS, they need to be consistently updated and consistently used. Organizations need to find ways to make them not just important, but integral.

Both Electronic Journal for the Integration of Technology in Education and eLearn Magazine discussed engaging reluctant learners and the best approaches to engage students. Chapter 9, all about motivation and performance suggests that only recently (1979) is motivation moving to the forefront of education.

In the past having direct instruction wasn’t a horrible thing since students usually talked with everyone face-to-face. With the advent of television, movies, and video games, teachers are having to compete (unfairly) with these new technological breakthroughs. The chapter on motivation and the journals I read both feel that students can be engaged, but we have to actively motivate them.

We can do this many ways, but it feels like personalization is becoming the key to motivation. Personalized instruction is one way to accomplish this, by considering students not as mindless automatons, but as thinking, breathing individuals. Another thing we can do is to encourage constructivism in the classroom, something that video games are already doing- World of Warcraft is very much based in a constructivist philosophy which assigns each member of your group a role and then asks that you work together to complete certain objectives.

My greatest concern is whether motivating students in the classroom can ever truly keep up with the accessibility of entertainment- students with cell phones are distracting enough. What will teachers do when students have the ability to access databases of films, television shows and video games all from their own brain? Technology truly is a double-edged sword.

One of the ideas I do plan to implement concerns intrinsic motivation. As an English teacher this will be easy for me- my plan is to start each new unit with consequences for not understanding the material. For example, if going over subject-verb agreement, I may bring in two college entrance essays- one that poor use of subject-verb agreement and another where it is lacking. I can have the students discuss who they would accept and why. Then I can have them point to their own papers, thereby improving motivation to learn the correct rules of that grammar lesson.

Gagne used his background in the military to form his initial theory. At the time, the military was the most important and most powerful machine in the world.

Now it’s entertainment- and not just passive entertainment either, INTERACTIVE entertainment.

This is the future of Web 2.0- we already provide content, but as the shift from top-down entertainment to bottom-up entertainment continues to happen, groups of people will be creating and forcing change in not just what we experience, but a decision as to how we experience it. Essentially, everyone will be responsible for everyone’s learning and we will all be choosing the best method of how we learn. Some background:

Interactivity is reaching a level never seen before, and with the internet, the power is completely in the hands of the people (assuming net neutrality continues). Going through my own personal favorite sites, I am happy to see that my favorites all include content not generated by some corporation, but by a group of people working together and submitting articles, videos, and comments. Favorites include (Boingboing, Fark, Failblog, Reddit) These groups of people are shaping my worldview, just as my occasional contribution is shaping theirs. Our webs of information are intertwining with one another. How did this all happen?

I think interactive entertainment, mainly video games are to blame.

When video games first came out it was all very simple- don’t die. As they got more complex, however, they also allowed users to make choices or create their own ideas- some games allowed for multiple pathways of “winning”. Video games first took us from passive learners to active learners by giving us choices in how our character looks, adding weight to our in-game decisions, and giving us several possible options to complete in-game objectives.

No wonder video games are stealing away television audiences. Through them we make the leap from viewers to creators.

This same creative impulse is shaping education right now. 10 years ago a Constructivist classroom would have cost a fortune. Now, thanks to virtual learning, it’s possible for students to create some truly amazing things.

Together.

In the future we are going to be learning from each other in collaborative environments, but taking control of our own educations. The role of an educator will be to not only facilitate utilization of the tools, but also making sure the student has a well-rounded world-view. We learn from each other, but we don’t want to be exclusionary in our learning. The teacher’s job will be introduce the several possibilities for engagement. The student, though, will be the one in the driver’s seat.

Blogs are great for showcasing  student work. As people, we have a natural desire to have what we write be seen by others. Blogs allow students to not only show the world their poem, story etc. but also gives them a sense of pride in what they have done. All too often students write solely for the teacher, not realizing that writing can be a communal tool. After all, while we can only speak to a few people at a time, our writing lives on even after we pass on.

Blogging allows students to get feedback from multiple individuals.

Perhaps the best part about blogging for students is the ability to receive feedback for their work from multiple individuals. While I may write the occasional, “Hey, great poem!”, I am only one person. The best part about publishing a poem is getting feedback from others in the classroom without me having to make several copies.  Blogging is definitely a tool I will have to utilize sometime this year.