Section 5: Trends and Issues in Various Settings

I currently work as an eighth grade math teacher, and have been doing so for the past 6 years.  I've worked for two different school districts.  The first school that I worked for had one teacher computer for every classroom with a laser printer and three student computers.  We also had to teach with an overhead projector because at the time there were not enough projectors to go around.  I took the liberty of buying my own projector to hook up to my personal laptop in order to project computer images onto the wall.  The next year the district built an all new school, with brand new ceiling mounted projectors and Smartboards.  My current district also has ceiling mounted projectors, Interwrite boards, and a Mobi to go along with it.  Our district recently wrote a grant that allowed all of our 8th grade students to receive an iPad, and the 8th grade math teachers received classroom sets of the new TI Nspire handheld calculators along with TI navigator.  Our district is very proactive in getting us technology for our classrooms.  

I think back to the old days where I was working on the overhead projector, and sometimes it just seemed easier than trying to incorporate all of this brand new technology into the classroom and make it meaningful.  I also could not imagine going back to only using an overhead projector.  All of the new technology allows me to show better visuals and representations of mathematical concepts to my students.  I no longer have student computers in my classroom, but all students this year have iPads, so it's okay.  I think that the important thing to do with incorporating technology within a school is to make sure that you are using it to enhance student learning and understanding of what is being taught.  Whether it is a computer based program to help catch students up, students doing their own research for a project, or students creating presentations after a lessons has been taught, the use of technology should connect to the concepts being taught at the time.

Through reading the chapters in section five, I've learned that technology has grown throughout it's implementation in many different  work environments.  In a military setting, it's important the the instructional designer knows exactly what type of training that is needed.  Training in the military setting has to be flexible and the products have to be adaptable to any type of environment.  Training in the military is mostly computer based training along with some hands on learning.  Instructional designers of this type of setting should take into consideration the different cultures of the people who are members of the military in order to increase the chances that the members will learn.  There is greater emphasis on the needs of the individual along with the needs of the whole organization.  It takes the work of everyone as a group to accomplish many of the goals in the military.

Members of health care education learn through problem solving.  Students research different medical diseases and have to apply that to either an actor who is showing certain symptoms, or through a computer based program that simulates symptoms of a person who is ill.  In the health care profession there are many risks involved.  If a person is not trained correctly, there are peoples lives at stake.  Not only are their risks for patients, but there are also risks for health care practitioners as well if they are not trained to handled situations correctly.   In medical education there are two main types of methods in which students learn which are simulation and multimedia.  Multimedia is used to show students visuals and videos of what different types of diseases do to individuals.  It was also mentioned that some training consists of virtual 3-d environments that mimic an actual clinic scene.  

I truly believe that in the world of education and instructional design, we can take ideas from the other fields and easily apply them.  I think that from the military setting, we should take the idea of learning about our students backgrounds in order to understand them and their learning styles.  We all know that not all students learn in the same way shape or format.  If we understood them better, maybe we could improve their sense of learning and understanding what we are teaching.  I believe that from the military setting we should also try to apply the idea that if the group succeeds, then we all succeed.  We should also incorporate computer based learning with our students in order to get them caught up, help them learn new concepts, or even to go into lessons in more detail or provide better visuals for students.  As teachers it's nice to see our students working as a team to learn together.  the medical field also has some important ideas to apply to the classroom setting as well, such as, problem based learning.  Students need to know that in real life they will be solving problems.  We should make sure to incorporarrite real life problems into our curriculum that students can work together, research online materials, and solve the problem that was presented to them.  Maybe the students could then create a presentation that consists of their conclusion.