Week 6: Tagging and Social Bookmarking

I think I created a Delicious account this summer but of course I can't remember my password or account name! I created another one and now wish I could change the username- but if you want it, it is brendagrahamksu  - I am kind of putting it on here so I can come back to my blog later and retreive it! I did actually take all of my bookmarks from my school computer and put it on this website, just in case our genius I.T. people erase my bookmarks, again!

Effective Instruction

When comparing the two articles, I definitely gained more knowledge from A Model of Effective Instruction. I double checked to make sure that I wasn't missing any pages from the Principles of Instruction, but it only listed two principles. Both of the articles encouraged motivating the learners with various types of incentives. I feel that this is necessary, but can be overdone at times. It is a hard balance to find, especially when you start offering extrinsic rewards. I like how they encouraged the teacher to engage the students with activating their prior knowledge in order to get the most out the learning. I thought that the first article offered a more organized format for listing the elements of effective instruction. The QUAIT method was easily to follow and remember. It did seem a bit out dated, as far as some terminology that was used versus in the Principles article. Cognitive development was one reference that really stood out to me as showing it was a more up-to-date article.


I tried to see if the Mindmeister web site would work by posting the concept map, but it wouldn't display the map. I will be producing something similar on Word, but my laptop doesn't have a wireless internet connection since I am in the boonies right now (St. Paul!) The computer I am on has Word 1976 or something! My mom's dial-up even more ridiculous yesterday; pretty bad when you have to go to your grandmas for a better internet connection! I am spoiled by the city life. :-)


Lastly, I think that effective instruction is important for EVERY single educator, including LMS professionals. I think the most powerful piece of instruction is getting students to realize the connection that your lesson has to their real life. They need to know that their is a purpose for learning it, or they are like the rest of us when it comes to professional development and just are left wondering why their time is being wasted. I think we can help teachers by showing them news ways that technology is going to benefit the projects or lessons that they are learning. The time that a LMS instructor could save a classroom teacher is also a way to make them more effective. I can think of several ways that blogs could benefit a classroom, but teachers have such limited time to prepare the sites. I wish my LMS would time some time to set those types of things up for me right now in order for me to utilize what I am learning about technology. Hopefully I will be that "life-saver" some day!

P.S. Thank you Patrice for helping me with concept map!

Week 10: Presentation Design

This week we began studying presentation design, I had no idea...
    how bad I "sucked" at making Powerpoints! :-) Here are a few of the questions, comments and concerns that I came up with after watching everything. I will be using these as notes for myself in the next week.

1.       If we aren’t supposed to use any of the standard slides from PP, do we have to make all of them ourselves?? Yikes.

2.       I don’t know how to place pictures over pictures using the watermark or transparent method.

3.       I do usually use a color theme, probably because I have used the standard slides! Colorlovers.com- never heard of it!

4.       I agree that presentations are super boring when you have exact words in them, yet I do do that sometimes if I am giving it as a print-out for students.

5.       Uh, we can’t use Google images?? Had no idea! Royalty Free istockphoto.com and Creative Commons compfight.com or flicker.com - made a note! Skitch.com  as well for making arrows and such

6.       How do you embed videos??

7.       Slideshare.net sounds like a place I could make some money after I upload and share it!

8.       Recapping is often the missing element. Probably because everyone, including the presenter, is sick of the content by the end!

9.        I will try to Google “beautiful fonts” it may help me- but I get overloaded with options! I am a sucker for the default!

10. Wow! 30 hours suggested on one presentation! I don't think I have that many sick days left to use to make mine this next week!