All For You

Tonight we received our Personal Philosophy Statements back from Wendy Garland.  It appears that our statements were not really “works in process” because I received an unfavorable grade under my standards.  She has so graciously allowed us to revisit our papers for resubmitting.  I will definitely take her up on her offer. 

Our Applied Project assignment was discussed in class.  As for me, this type of assignment is what I do on a every day basis in my current position.  The assignment requirements however are a little different from what I am accustom to in the past however I don’t foresee a issue with making the adjustments.  It will be interesting to get feedback on a particular area that I feel I am most knowledgeable.  Unfortunately, this class is my first formal class that touches on instructional design.  This is interesting because my work experience for the past 10 years has been in the instructional design area.  I am looking forward to the feedback in hopes to sharpen my formal skill level. 

Things really do seem to be moving very fast this semester.  We are already working on our first fifteen page paper as group, which is due next week.    The assignment is quite different from any assignments in the past.  We have been charged with reflecting on the movie “Twelve Angry Men”.  In the past I have never been asked to reflect on a movie, reflection has been mostly tied to a topic or literature. 

This new way of reflecting is more interesting.  It’s exciting because in the end all of my classmates  will have their own take and their groups perspective on the movie.  This is when we will all see how our own interpretations have to eventually come to a consensus, thus the whole idea behind the movie.  In reality, we are living the movie through the writing of this paper.  We are learning theories in class while all along experiencing the practical piece of the instruction through our written assignment. 

Eventually, each individual from their respective group will have to give in to one unanimous view point.  We may all experience the struggles of getting their, however each one of us have a common goal of receiving an “A” on our group paper.  We may end up with some battle wounds, however hopefully in the end everyone will receive their individual metal of honor an “A”.

The small group assignment was interesting this week.  We were assigned a portion from the readings tonight.  Our assigned portion needed to be relaid to the rest of the class.  Each group took very different angles at their approach.  We really do have wonderful artists in our class.  Also there were some that decided to just lecture and not use visuals which may work in some situations, however I feel visuals are a great way to increase comprehension among your learners.  Once the lecture is over most times you may forget what was discussed because you have nothing to tie to it.  The visual will at least give the learner a image to recall when trying to recall the information given at the time.

Tonight we all turned in our teaching philosophy as we see it today.  Writing this assignment felt a little like “acting”.  Unfortunately sometimes depending of the setting you are facilitating in it may not allow you to really practice what you preach.  On many occasions I have had to struggle with my espoused belief of practice and the mandates that are handed down to follow.  Most times these two are totally different.  This is hard for me because I look at facilitating as a form of artwork.  You should be allowed some flexibility when creating instruction, hence my job title “Instructional Designer”.  Really on my paper my title is just words because the ”Designer” piece is not fully exercised because of polices and procedures.