658 Reflective Blog

658 Reflective Blog Post - Instructional Design: Application

This course proved to be a challenge for me.  Family emergencies that took me out of town occurred far too often for me to stay on track with the assignments in this course.

What did I learn about course design and planning? 

I learned that designing a course online is not as easy as I thought.  I had decided to use Google Classroom since that is the platform available in my school district.  Google Classroom is not a difficult program to use but is does not have many options to use to create interactive presentations.  It has limited images and designs available to create exciting pages.  Also, adding an audio version to Google Slides or Google Classroom proved to be challenging.  I tried adding a Voki to Google Slides and PowerPoint and it was difficult.  My solution was to buy a subscription to Voki that allowed me to make presentations and upload the link.

My final product was very similar to my planning document except for some of the activities. My students currently use Spelling City and Vocabulary on a daily basis.  For my second instructional module, I decided to incorporate some of the activities in Spelling City and Vocabulary.  

As far as technology, using Google Classroom and Voki was a new experience.   I used the Voki program for presentations.  It took time to find what worked and what did not work.  It was a trial and error process finding the correct text to use so the avatar would pronounce everything correctly.  I am proud that I was eventually able to make the Voki presentations work in the modules.

As far as lessons learned, when making my blueprint, I would look and attach links to the games and videos I want to use to the actual blueprint.  By doing this, It would save time and frustration when actually building the modules.  The welcome module ended up being the most difficult component to create.  It is difficult to approach the welcome project as if the students are not familiar with program and do not know how to navigate in the program.  I hope that after students use this unit, I can anticipate any questions and problems for the next unit I design using Google Classroom.  I think the actual instructional modules were easier to craft because I am familiar with the subject matter.  I look forward to finishing the modules and the student's reactions when they start working on them after break.