The Wave of the Future

Section 8: New Directions in Instructional Design and Technology

This section of the textbook addresses new directions and emerging technologies for IDT. For your final post, reflect on how you might apply each of the following in your current or future position in the IDT field:

1. distributed or e-learning environments My favorite e-learning environment for my 8th-10th graders has to be edmodo.com.  That one site is revolutionizing how I teach and interact with my students.  I was grading an assignment last night, noticed that a large percent were failing, so I posted the make-up assignment on the class "wall" even before I distributed their papers.  For class presentations, students turn in their files to Edmodo.  After that, I can log in to our main computer and open each file for their presentation, eliminating the need for flash drives.  Often, students come to class knowing about new technologies from cool articles that I post to our online class "library."  Students can take polls or comment on each other's thoughts in real-time.  Page 281 asks the question:  "Do we have the conceptual models to adjust to this shifting landscape?"  Sometimes, I feel very equipped, since teaching this way melds with my personal inclination for technology.  Other times, I feel like I am barely scratching the surface of the capabilities of e-learning environments.
2. reusable design or learning objects I learned through the chapter reading what exactly a learning object is.  Now I realize that creating learning objects is a reflex for teachers with little time and with many learning objectives for their students.  For example, during the "setting the stage" part of the lesson cycle, I like to use short clips from sites like Youtube to get students excited about a lesson.  Or I might use the same comic strip to teach two different character traits.  I plan to start looking at the objects I bring in more objectively so I am even more intentional about using the learning objects that I work so hard to find to cover more than one topic. 
3. rich media The use of rich media allows me to speak the same language as my students.  Most of them are interested in video games which have evolved to be highly sophisticated and surprisingly education, with developers of shooting games using the names and images of real military battle gear, etc.  Today's students are used to learning through a narrative.  I will be looking for ways to bring that richness into my everyday teaching.  (Below is a picture of "King" George Washington as reimagined in the Assasin's Creed video game)

4. emerging instructional technologies, such as artificial intelligence, cybernetics, Web 2.0, virtual worlds, electronic games, etc. Last spring, I learned during a tour of the University of North Texas' College of Engineering about the existence of hobbyists and enthusiasts who created video games in their spare time.  Microsoft XNA is (allegedly) simple enough for students to use to develop their own video games using saved chunks of code that they can access from a library.  I am still working with get our school an Xbox so that our students can start working on the virtual environments of the future.