Jessica's+Page

I resurrected my blog thanks to Polly. [] I was using it as a way to motivate me to complete my annotated bibliography. I might start that again or find something a little more exciting. Thanks for giving it a look.

Discussion Questions 6/22/09

Above all I want students to benefit from personalized instruction using online technologies. Once I hone my skills developing personalized online instruction for students I want to start training teachers and other educators on how to develop these programs.
 * Who is the audience for your doctoral work and beyond?

I believe that prescriptive, personalized, or differentiated instruction is the future of education. Students are more motivated when they are learning what they need to learn in ways that work for them. Not everything has to be in the student’s comfort zone but it does help to develop confidence at that level.
 * How are you attempting to inform your intuition? (i.e. are you focusing on a passion area?)

By developing online personalized instruction and using it with my students I am meeting the needs of my students and my needs as a teacher a researcher. I hope to see (positive) results immediately with my students. Then I hope to get some of my colleagues to try to develop their own personalized systems. It is a focus/field that I am developing, or at least I am developing my understanding of the field. I am taking information from many different fields and taking what applies and using it in my programs. DI, Online, DE, I am grounded in using personalized online instruction to support my student’s learning.
 * In what ways will your niche allow you to be local, focused and grounded?

My students can become disenchanted with school. They feel it has not relevant to their lives or they don’t need to learn that information. They like choices and even if they make the wrong choice for themselves they learn from that. Students need to develop metacogitive skills. There are so many problems it addresses I will continue to add more if I have time.
 * What local needs or problems can be addressed through your niche?

Personalized instruction can be traced to individualized instruction in the 1970’s. I will add to this section later. My umbrella chart has four distinct areas of interest; it is the combinations that make it interesting. My areas of interest and reading are: • personalized/prescriptive/differentiated instruction • online/distance teaching and learning • science education • educational technology in general
 * Look at each level of your umbrella chart, what have read in each area?

//__I really need to read more articles that combine the topics. I am also willing to purchase books that relate to the topics. Does anyone know of any?__//

Online personalized instruction has the potential to meet the specialized needs of my students. Those students who have problems working on a computer due to lack of exposure or just an aversion to computers can use my class to learn to use computers as a tool.
 * You should be able to explain the basis of your niche and the reason your focus area is important locally and beyond.

I think I will meet the needs of the group and my own projects if I research teaching science online in k-12 settings. It might be even better to research personalized learning environments and online technology, since it is more of a core of my philosophy and goals.
 * Where should you focus your library work an inquiry group discussions this week?

I need to find a few topics rather than reading everything from computer science, special education, gifted education, educational technology, distance education, science education, secondary education, and personalized learning environments. Then again to be true to my topic it does combine all of these aspects, hopefully in a beneficial way. Right now my annotated bibliography has several different parts corresponding to the above topics. Once I write a literature review for a project I expect the topics will gel a little bit.
 * How does your niche relate to your current annotated bibliography? What do you need to do?