As an assignment to create my own blogs on instructional design and learning I have explored and read many blogs from the educational community. My own process of choosing which blogs to comment on my own blog is linked to the four orientations to learning which Smith, M. K. (1999) lists as behaviorist, cognitivist, humanist and the social/situational orientation to learning.
Within the social or situational orientation to learning, Smith states that "learning involves participation in a community of practice". Because of my own participation within the homeschooling/unschooling community, I have chosen the first blog to be that of Rachel Tennenbaum's An Unschooling Life. Specifically, her blog on "How Unschooling is Changing How We Think of Learning" where she gives an overview of what unschooling is about mixed with opinions from other unschoolers.
She mentions educational philosopher John Holt whose philosophy of learning is that we humans are "a learning animal; we like to learn; we need to learn; we are good at it; we don't need to be shown how or made to do it. What kills the process are the people interfering with it or trying to regulate it or control it. (As interviewed by Dr. Bumgarner in1980 )
Based on this philosophy, the interconnection of all information in life is explained and with that, she quotes many unschooled kids and parents. One of the parents specifically states that in life "the critical thing is that you know how to learn, how to think, how to communicate". The importance of this in the educational field cannot be taken lightly and within instructional design it cannot be underestimated. Learning is seen as a process (Smith, M. K.,1999).
The need for instructional design that truly connects to the different ways we learn is crucial. Kids who are unschoolers or homeschoolers in general are being given an alternative learning experience. Outside of an institution, private classes and online classes are all included within these alternatives. Though the reasons for seeking out the alternatives varies in each families, the one common thing we all have is that we look for and find out the different ways children learn. With unschoolers it is mainly thorugh living and being guided through personal interests. This brings me back to the participation in the community that Smith (1999) talks about, as many unschoolers/homeschoolers reach out into the communities through family's WebPages or blogs in which they record their life experiences in the hopes of sharing and learning with and from others with similar interest.
The second blog I chose was Experiencing E-Learning from Christy Tucker . Tucker's blog caught my attention after reading about her background. She was trained as a music teacher who ended up being an instructional designer. Clearly her life experiences lead her to change her focus within learning communities and apply her knowledge into something that was more meaningful to her.
Her entry "What does an instructional designer do?" provided me with answers as to the steps an instructional designer takes to create learning experiences. On this specific blog she explores the different ways in which instructional designers develop experiences which can help learning. She states that instructional designers "know how people learn and have ideas on how to help them learn better".
The ways in which instructional designers do their job correlate with a couple of the orientations of learning stated by Smith M. K. (1999). Having to work with the subject matter experts to begin with implies the need for interaction and observation as stated within the social and situational orientation. Information is given to the instructional designer not only through the experts in the subject but also through the students. Also developing objectives goes hand in hand with the structure of content described within cognitivism.
Instructional designers as well as other professionals in the field of education are using blogs not only to share knowledge. Many are using these for curriculum development, reviewing resources, having philosophical conversations (Ferriter, B. 2009). As a student who is learning about instructional design using online methods, I would have loved to see samples of her work linked to this post. Though I realize this specific post was an overview of what instructional designers do, maybe adding a link to look at samples would have been more helpful to me.
The third blog I chose was one of Ferdinand Krauss with a very short post called "A Framework for the Pedagogical Evaluation of eLearning Environments" . This one is a reference to a paper with the same name which itself quotes Chickerin & Gamson's (1987) 'Seven Principles of Effective Teaching'. Chickerin & Gamson's paper is focused on the undergraduate education with little to no emphasis on virtual education. The first link posted on this blog led me to think it was geared towards e-learning, but after clicking on the link for the first addressed source and not having access to that one, it might have defeated the purpose of even adding it to this blog.
However, I still included it on this review because it enlighten me on the responsibility one has about posting information, leading readers to and from sources and the value of these actions. Making reference to non-accessible information would not be a valuable post. I am officially using blogs as a learning tool in my own class of Learning Theories and Instruction and will be using this blog also as a reflection of my own learning experience in the use of virtual education.
Resources
Ferriter, B. (2009). Learning with blogs and wikis. Educational Leadership, 66(5), 34–38.
Smith, M. K. (1999). Learning theory. The encyclopedia of informal education. Retrieved from http://www.infed.org/biblio/b-learn.htm
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