Week 6

One way that I feel as though my school could learn from what instructional designers do in higher education are distance learning modules. My district, like many others is facing significant budget cut issues. My wife’s district in fact, is considered cutting their alternative education program. If this proposal should go through, there is discussion of offering online courses for these students through distance learning. If this is the case, then there must be a team ready to take on new challenges and potential problems that may occur. Much of this workload will fall into the hands of the current technology instructors of the district.
I feel that I am competent with how communication skills at school. With my place of employment, students are picked up by family members (we do not offer bussing). For this reason, I am often times confronted by parents with issues or I approach parents with problems that are occurring with a particular student. Although I prefer to speak to parents face-to-face, that I not always an option therefore, I use email and telephone. Another area that I feel that I am competent with my position is my lesson planning and organization. My school provides a data base of lesson plans and what GLCE’s they cover. By planning this way, my units are stored on the school’s computer and database. Two areas that I feel that I can improve on are demonstrating effective questioning skills and promoting the retention of knowledge and skills. Sometimes during my lessons I get so caught up in what we are doing, I forget to stop and probe for questions. I learned in my undergrad classes to constantly ask students questions. With that, I also need to continue to go back and assess content that has already been taught and build on that.