After reading tips about 8 Characteristics of successful, two things stood out to me-familiar and responsive.
I would like to make a different to the author’s advice to make it familiar. The author suggests that making something intuitive means “you do it by making it familiar. Familiar is just that: something which appears like something else you’ve encountered.” I totally understand what the author means and partly agree with his opinion. But, as a matter of fact, users encounter new features all the time and they get used to it by using them. I agree that a user interface look familiar to them. But I think a designer do not have to be afraid of adding an unfamiliar feature in their product because users, especially digital natives might enjoy challenging themselves to figure something out.
For example, I visited a website and navigated a while, and I wanted to go back to home page. I was not able to find the home tab on the menu bar and a home icon. I was trying to figure out how to go back to home. And I click on a logo of the website and it worked. I felt proud of myself because I had never encountered such a situation, but had successfully figured it out by experimenting a few more clicks. That is why I decided to use my class logo as the home click button.
Second, I totally agree with the author’s opinion on ‘responsive’. Nobody wants to waste his or her time and experience frustration while using technology. Also, sending and receiving a feedback is the core part of instruction whether it is a face-to-face or virtual class. Therefore, I think I need to give a lot of thoughts about how to make my final project interactive with the audience.
Monday, July 25, 2011
Monday, July 18, 2011
An interesting article and why we have to use technology
A few days ago, I read a very interesting article. An American teen won a second place in the Korean culture and language contest held in America. As a middle school student, she started to learn Korean to date a Korean guy whom she had a secret crush on. Even though the guy moved out of town and she did not have a chance to date the Korean guy, she fell in love with the Korean language and continued to learn the language by herself on the Internet. Therefore, I think the more we properly incorporate technology into our teaching practices, the better students will figure out how to use technology in their own learning.
Thursday, July 7, 2011
How will i design a professional development workshop
As a future leader to facilitate a professional development workshop, I will be in a position to let the power of technology be known to general teachers I think I will keep in mind several aspects in leading the workshop.
First, there are many teachers who are resistant to the use of technology. At the same time, they are struggling to keep students’ attention in the classroom and are attributing it to students’ short attention spans. However, the real problem may originate from the fact that the traditional educational environment can no longer keep today’s students motivated. They need to understand what is wrong with their current traditional lecture method and what is good with the incorporation of technology into their teaching practices. They also need to recognize that today’s students are totally different from the older generation in their learning style. Therefore, traditional teachers need to realize the power of technology in helping students learn better and encourage them to be independent learners in the workshop.
Second, every teacher has his/her expertise in his/her teaching practice whether they are traditional teachers or innovative teachers. Therefore, I may do collaborative work in preparing workshop materials. Collaborative work is a good method to show how useful technology is in order to work together and come up with better materials or ideas; sharing and editing documents in Google Doc when making handouts and other products. Another characteristic of a group of teachers is that teachers are very opinionated about a certain topics.
With these in mind, I think I can achieve my goal of the instruction by designing the workshop and teaching materials as follows.
First, I will use web-based resources such as YouTube videos or websites to show the capabilities of web 2.0 technologies. This will help traditional teachers understand that digital natives prefer to create and share their products over reading books.
Second, I may invite student guest speakers who used to be bored by passive learning, but are transformed to be active learners with the use of technologies and multi-media in the classroom. This will help technology-resistant teachers realize the power of technology.
Third, I will arrange time where teachers can share the pros and cons of both technology-enhanced education and traditional education. I will split the group into small groups and the small group members will be mixed with technology-expert teachers and technology-resistant teachers.
Fourth, I will make my instructional delivery interactive by having the audience send cell phone text messages to a website such as polleverywhere.com where the audience send their text messages and get immediate responses or statistics.
First, there are many teachers who are resistant to the use of technology. At the same time, they are struggling to keep students’ attention in the classroom and are attributing it to students’ short attention spans. However, the real problem may originate from the fact that the traditional educational environment can no longer keep today’s students motivated. They need to understand what is wrong with their current traditional lecture method and what is good with the incorporation of technology into their teaching practices. They also need to recognize that today’s students are totally different from the older generation in their learning style. Therefore, traditional teachers need to realize the power of technology in helping students learn better and encourage them to be independent learners in the workshop.
Second, every teacher has his/her expertise in his/her teaching practice whether they are traditional teachers or innovative teachers. Therefore, I may do collaborative work in preparing workshop materials. Collaborative work is a good method to show how useful technology is in order to work together and come up with better materials or ideas; sharing and editing documents in Google Doc when making handouts and other products. Another characteristic of a group of teachers is that teachers are very opinionated about a certain topics.
With these in mind, I think I can achieve my goal of the instruction by designing the workshop and teaching materials as follows.
First, I will use web-based resources such as YouTube videos or websites to show the capabilities of web 2.0 technologies. This will help traditional teachers understand that digital natives prefer to create and share their products over reading books.
Second, I may invite student guest speakers who used to be bored by passive learning, but are transformed to be active learners with the use of technologies and multi-media in the classroom. This will help technology-resistant teachers realize the power of technology.
Third, I will arrange time where teachers can share the pros and cons of both technology-enhanced education and traditional education. I will split the group into small groups and the small group members will be mixed with technology-expert teachers and technology-resistant teachers.
Fourth, I will make my instructional delivery interactive by having the audience send cell phone text messages to a website such as polleverywhere.com where the audience send their text messages and get immediate responses or statistics.
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