Remote Possibilities: Likely Instructional Learning by Lauren

 The gist of Bishop and Foshay's exchange in chapter 19 was an agreement that implementation of educational tech in schools is not scaling effectively. Foshay asserts that this is a problem with the methodology of how ET is developed. That we are not asking the right questions, considering the classroom as it is, and collaborating with stated educator needs so that what is developed is usable from the perspective of those who we would like to believe it benefits or is effective for. Bishop asserts that the problems start even further back. That there is a failure at the corporate leadership levels to listen to or champion ET development that is mindful and practical and guided by actual classroom experience rather than ideals and irrelevant experience and preferences. Both are calling for a type of activism. Bishop is calling for ID activism that challenges and disrupts organizational culture and norms so that space is opened for the kind of change and exploration that Foshay is ad...

 Last week I attended an event hosted by WMUX in which instructors discussed how they were using AI in their courses, and also how they were writing policies into their syllabi in an attempt to be a guide for students who they assume will be using AI anyway. I think like many things AI is being deployed, used, and expanded at a widely disproportionate rate than what those of us in the academic realms assume, and that those in the corporate world as well. I think we are making assumptions about the upcoming generations and their understanding of various technologies. I think AI risks becoming an embedded technology before the children who are under ten today have any chance to have any opinion or say on.  When it comes to how to bring AI into the classroom - whether that is as a tool to be used (for educators and students), an enemy to be grappled with, or a savior to put outsized hopes in - I have opinions, but they quickly slip into foolishness of prophesying. Perhaps I do th...

While I thought Reigeluth and Harmon made very interesting statements about the state of education as well as its trajectory, I also felt as though they were talking over reality, and not in a way that felt visionary. I felt that Reigeluth's overview of the lacks in our current educational focus, and the the highlights of what incorporation of his vision for learner-centered individuated instruction would need to focus on, was compelling. It captured a lot of the educational ideals I ascribe to as well - just in time learning, championing student guided and student motivated direction, plans that met a student where they were at and task over an expectation of passive absorption - I felt that his theories miss in painfully glaring ways the importance of the social and peer-to-peer aspects of education. I felt this especially hard when the most compelling part of Harmon's essay jumped out at me, his theory that we have moved from physical progression to knowledge progression and...

  VS The prompt this week is to review two instructional platforms from a suggested list (or select our own). I have chosen Coursera and Khan Academy for my review. These websites each have different goals, audiences, and methods of going about accomplishing those things. Below I will provide a brief blurb on each site pulled from their respective Wikipedia articles. I will give my initial impressions and a personal anecdote of experience with each. I will then rank each site in three categories;  1. ease of use for a person in my identity and with my skillset  2. what I feel are the top two strengths of each website through the instructional design lens at my current understanding level  3. a suggestion apiece for how I could see these sites used in a guided learning experience through the lens of the petal learning through topic exploration method I outlined in my podcast episode below. (I know, exhausting to site myself, but this is my blog and I'm curious if it h...

 In the opening paragraph of chapter 15 Marker says the majority of businesses - who have been allowed to become the dominant institutions of our time - are so focused on profit that it "contributes to adverse social and environmental outcomes that outstrip our biological, psychological, and even spiritual abilities." (Marker, 117) Initially I read this as Marker criticizing the system that vaunts business in this way, the one he calls out for "making profit the ultimate measure of success." However, upon closer read it feels unsettlingly like rather than having an interest in changing the system, Marker is making a case for the way neurobiology can improve the methods of HPI to operationalize human behavior to match the tasks of profit better and also wouldn't it be nice if along the way businesses took on a more moral - here defined as taking into their method of profit methods of diversifying the industry in ways that allow business at large to continue into ...