Week 11

Plan for Week 11

Reading

Chapter 22 - What Do Instructional Designers Do in Higher Education? This is the third in the series of three chapters in the book that focus on instructional technology in different contexts.

Activity

The tool you’re going to play with this week is Bubbl.us, a free, online concept-mapping creator. You may be familiar with software used in many schools called Inspiration or Kidspiration (we use it here at WMU). Bubbl.us has very similar functionality, but it’s free (and we like free).

Concept maps can be helpful for helping students think through their ideas before writing an essay or planning a project or presentation. It can also be helpful for teachers to create concept maps that they share with their learners to help illustrate an idea or set of ideas. Here are a couple of pages from the Inspiration website that describe the power of concept maps for visual thinking and another that provides some examples of educational concept maps.

Next, I highly recommend checking out the "Help" system (upper-right of screen) that will walk you through basic Bubbl.us functionality.

Now, for your assignment:

1. Create a sample concept that would either be created by you, a teacher, or an example of one you would ask your student/learner to create.
2. Using the Export button near the top of the screen (you'll need to have created an account first) to create a JPG image
3. Embed this image in a new blog post on your blog.
4. Along with the image, describe in some detail in your blog post what this concept map represents and how you would use it in a lesson or in your work – or how and why your students are intended to use concept-mapping. Basically, explain your idea for using concept mapping in an instructional setting.

Wow! I just created this Prezi. For this assignment to show teachers the transition from DreamWeaver to Google Sites. Has the ability to draw in your concept map and place images, video, and others along side of text. Way cool!



Below is the concept map I created to assist me in organizing what I need to teach our teachers for the Google Sites Professional Development I let today. Click on the image for a full size graphic.

I think I like the Prezi better however, A little less restrictive when it comes to placement of your ideas.

Reflection

For your reading reflection, since you’ve now read the past three weeks about instructional design/technology in three different contexts (business, P-12 & higher ed), identify 2 or 3 significant themes or differences you’ve noticed across these contexts and describe them. Is there a particular area or way that you believe your current professional working environment could learn from the other contexts described in these chapters?