“WK1Assgn.Moore.J

Hello! My name is Joshua (please, call me Josh) Moore. I am a 7th-grade math teacher at a local middle school and currently an instructional design student at Walden University. My path to instructional design started with my interest in blended learning and technology in the classroom. My interest in blended learning led me to Instructional design. Part of my journey in Instructional Design (or ID) is to host a blog.

For my first post, I wanted to take the opportunity to explore other blogs and bring the content to you, the reader, in hopes of inspiring you to explore on your own. 

Before we explore, let's unpack what a blog is. A blog is a way to share personal news of interest to you and allows others who have the same appeal to connect with and expound upon (Common Craft, Blogs in Plain English). Blogs can be about literally anything; for example,  this blog will be about instructional design and education, but if I wanted to, I could create a blog about video games or lifting weights and share stories (news) about those topics. Now that we know what a blog is and what this blog is about let's review some of the other blogs that I found interesting. 

Our first site is infed.org/learning-theory-models-products-and-process/. Here we are given an excellent overview of the difficulties of learning, such as what it is, what it isn't, what process is involved, how we measure learning, and more. One of the things that I found interesting is that the blog included work done by the researcher Soljo (missing the accent marks), in which he asked adults to share what they thought learning was. The responses varied from a quantitive increase in knowledge to learning and understanding reality differently ( Smith, M.K). Also, on the site, a table explains each of the learning theories and breaks them down from the theorist to the way in manifest in adult learning. If you come across the table, be sure to zoom the page out a bit so that the words aren't scrambled! 

The second site is teacherhead.com/2021/12/07/five-ways-to-sustain-student-attention/. As an instructor, I found myself engrossed in this blog post. The author, Tom Sherrington, does a great job of describing the mental war of getting student attention and suggesting different strategies. I loved reading over the listening with accountability section. I made mental notes to see if I did indeed do checks for understanding or hold my class accountable for tracking whoever is speaking. 

The last site was a wordpress titled Teacher to ID and can be found at wordpress.com/read/blogs/198997704/posts/200. The author(s) Issac and Co gives a quick snapshot of what it is like to be an ID and how staying on top of trends and the changes in the ID space will be important as one begins the career. They then give a bit of a forecast of trends for 2022 that ID's need to stay fresh on. I particularly found "gamification," Augmented Reality, and Project-based learning of unique interest and worth exploring on my own time later. I felt that this blog was worth following since I am making the transition from teacher to ID as well.

References

Co, I. (n.d.). How To Stay On Top Of eLearning Trends: Life as An Instructional Designer. Retrieved from wordpress.com/read/blogs/198997704/posts/200.

Craft, C. (n.d.). Blogs in Plain English. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NN211pWXjXl

Sherrignton, T. (2021, 12 07). Five ways to: Sustain Student Attention. Retrieved from teacherhead.com: wordpress.teacherhead.com

Smith, M. (1999). Learning theory. The encyclopedia of informal education. Retrieved from http://www.infed.org/biblio/b-learn.htm.