Photo Sharing/ Ch. 2

Despite having accumulated a vast number of digital pictures over the last several years, I have shied away from posting them online using Facebook, Flickr or some other service. I guess I always thought that if I wanted someone to see a picture, I could send it to them in an email. Now having to do so for this class and reflecting about the potential benefits from a teaching standpoint, I can easily think about how I will use this next year in my classroom. I tell a lot of stories in my class, and try to connect learning experiences with other parts of life. Many times I talk about my own personal experiences and try to weave meaning and importance into a story that children can relate to. Several times I have been wishing I had a picture to go along with my story. Well, if I post my pictures onto a photo sharing site, I can easily access a certain picture and have it ready to display to my class as needed in a lesson. This would be much easier than trying to bring pictures back and forth from home on a flash drive or sending by email. Using a site like Flickr to host and organize the photos can also allow me to share the pictures with family members and the community very easily by embedding them into my website or blog.

There certainly are constraints regarding student use of a site like Flickr. In fact, in the TechCamp I ran this summer we used a service called Flickr Storm, which allows you to quickly find pictures tagged with certain words and that have a creative common license (great for presentations). I had to spend quite a few minutes discussing with the students about how inappropriate "thumbnails" might show up in search results, even if they weren't searching for something inappropriate-and that it was their job to surf AWAY from such content. So again I ask anyone out there-- is there a site like Flickr for education?? ((someone needs to follow VoiceThread's lead and create more Web 2.0 education-friendly services))
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Regarding Ch. 2, it is intriguing to me how much instructional design there was in my undergraduate training for becomming a Physical Education teacher. In fact (at WMU at least) the major ID theories provide the backbone for lesson planning in P.E. So I have been working with the ADDIE process for several years without really even knowing what ID was! This systematic and reflective process is something that is engrained in my teaching habits due to the thousands of pages of lesson plans that I cranked out for P.E. lessons as an undergrad. (And yes, to debunk common "gym teacher" myths.... there ARE lesson plans in P.E. and there ARE skills, knowledge and affective instructional objectives in each lesson!) Even though I now work as a classroom teacher, those same ID steps weigh heavily in my everyday planning and instruction.

One major difference I see in the classroom is that there are already objectives that are given to the teacher from the local district and the state. It is not like if I am going to plan a math unit, I have to write a dozen objectives prior to doing so (thank goodness). Our curriculum is matched with Grade Level Content Expectations and therefore much of the ID process is already completed for the teacher. It is then up to them to take on the instructional planning and implementation part of the process, as well as the evaluation. Still, many parts of evaluation are a standardized part of curriculum as well, so all the teacher does is administer it. In some instances and for certain subject matter, there may not be a given curriculum, however, and at that point the teacher DOES become a full-fledged Instructional Designer and following the ADDIE process would be in the best interest of student learning. Due to many, many constraints, however, I think it is rare that a full time teacher can also do double time as an Designer for any extended period of time.