IP&T Nanaimo Bars--Yum!

Nanaimo Bars

Base:
¾ cup margarine softened
1/3 cup granulated sugar
½ cup cocoa powder
1 ½ tsp. vanilla extract
2 eggs
3 cups Graham Crumbs
1 ½ cups coconut
¾ cup chopped walnuts

Filling:
1/3 cup margarine softened
1 (99 g pkg.) Vanilla Instant Pudding
3 cups sifted icing sugar
1/3 cup milk

Topping:
3 tbsp. milk
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

Place ¾ cup margarine, granulated sugar, cocoa, vanilla and eggs into a large bowl; stir until mixture is well blended. Combine graham crumbs, coconut and walnuts and add to chocolate mixture. Mix until all dry ingredients are well coated. Press firmly and evenly into 13 x 9 inch pan. Cream 1/3 cup margarine in medium bowl. Mix pudding power and icing sugar together. Add to margarine along with 1/3 cup milk and beat until it resembles icing. Spread filling evenly over base and chill 15 minutes. Heat 3 tbsp. milk in top of double boiler, add chocolate chips. Stir constantly to make smooth chocolate topping. Spread melted chocolate quickly and evenly over top. Chill at least 2 hours before serving. Makes about 4 dozen bars.

Response to R. Osguthorpe

Osguthorpe stated that teaching is a moral enedavor because it is an action that is undertaken in regard to other human beings. I agree with this statement, because no instruction or teaching is valueless. The instruction always reflects some bias whether it be from the teacher him/herself or the organization the instructor represents. I was impressed that Dr. Black asked the question today whether there are any journals related to Instructional Design that touch upon agency and terms familiar to people of faith. These terms and principles have been overlooked and need to be addressed. Such are my thoughts in haste.

Lists and lists galore

Concerning Skill Sets for the Human Performance Technologist, by Stolovitch, Keeps and Rodrigue.

It appears that since there are not yet any formal definitions for skills required of Human Performance Technologists now would be a good time to apply for a position. I am unable to tell how old this article is, but it certainly provided all sorts of valuable information about HPT.

At the beginning of the article, I was beginning to think that this article was going to tell me that no one really knows what HPT is. Fortunately, it did not. Rather, the article presented to me excellent definitions of the field as well as a history of the field and suggested basic skills that human performance technologists should have.

The recommended skills are:
Technical skills:
analysis and observation skills
design skills (creativity, logical thinking and media knowledge)
People skills:
management skills
communication and interpersonal skills

I learned that the most important general skill for an HP technologist is to keep a steady focus on client need. The field really is about the needs of the people for whom we are working and not of our own designs.

I also aprreciated the inclusion of the characteristics of the outstanding HP Technologist:
1. Results-driven
2. Investigative
3. Knows how to set and maintain standards
4. Cooperative / collaborative
5. Flexible while maintaining principles
6. Willing and able to add value

The authors also presented suggestions for future HPT skills requirements as well as developing HPT practitioner skills.

Overall, a very useful and informative article that also humanized the field for me. HPT now feels less clinical and more human.

Nugae Samuelis

< style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Technologies and groups in classrooms. They provide excellent and often stimulating alternatives to the traditional classroom set-up of a teacher lecturing to learners. However, while I was reading Collins’ and Brown’s articles, I was continually haunted by images from my teaching experiences in Maine. I kept seeing the faces of children with whom I had labored, and I often asked myself, “could this have worked with Dylan?” or, “would such a situation have been effective for Ms. Lybbert’s second grade class?”

< style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">I think that there is no one method of instruction that is effective for all learners. Some children respond well to the traditional method, while others thrive in group work. Then there are some who just seem to be unreachable in classroom settings. How can educators and instructors get children who have no interest in school and little to motivation to learn the mandatory subjects to become self-directed learners? I worked with three third-graders for half a year who had emotional problems as well as learning problems. One lad came from an abusive where he either witnessed abuse or was a recipient of it. This little boy was often emotionally distressed in class. He had poor social skills and was unable to perform in group work. Katie, and her twin brother Richard could barely read at a Kindergarten level and found computer instructions difficult to follow unless someone read to them. They also had very short attention spans and had difficulty sitting through class lectures. They needed almost constant supervision by either the teacher or a teacher’s assistant.

< style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Brown discussed fostering a community of learners featuring students who are partially responsible to design their own learning. At what age would such a practice begin? She seemed to hint at an experiment involving 6^th, 7^th and 8^th graders. I could see that working, but not for the early elementary grades. I worked with some young children who were very self-motivated and organized, but there were just as many who needed their hands held nearly every step of the way. Instructional designers need to develop design strategies that take all levels of self-discipline and self-motivation into account. Group work is fine for some and utterly ineffective for others. Computer time can be practical for eager learners, but a waste of time for others who read poorly or who see computers as toys rather than tools.

I do not think that there is a simple remedy to the complex issue of learner needs. Every class is different because of the learners in them. Some are more willing and able to learn than others. Some attend class with enormous distraction due to a host of issues. Rather than having a tool geared to fit all learners, instructors need a tool box in which they can find the best tool for the individual learners.

Yet another related field

So, we have another field out there that is somewhat and somehow related to IP&T. I found the description of Knowledge management to be most interesting, and I am amazed that it is such a new field. I guess that with the explosion of information in the past few years, it has been exceedingly difficult to keep up with all the new facts and data and productively manage them. If I understand the term "Knowledge Management" correctly, it is a response to the huge amounts of information that are available acting as a filter to help people access the most pertinent information to their needs. From this definition and the definitions given by the authors, Knowledge Management seems to me to be like a more proactive form of a library. Libraries generally acquire data, but do little or nothing with it, leaving the patrons to create knowledge out of the data. Would a KM team go through data to create knowledge for an organization? How is this different from a research team or hiring subject matter experts? I am curious to learn about this field and how it differs from what is already out there. I have an inkling of an idea, but I look forward to our class discussion to clarify things for me.

Technology is our friend

Due to technical problems that I have been experiencing, there will be a delay in my posting for this week. I beseech your patience and clemency.

Stay tuned.

Nugae de Kozma et Clark

Clark asserted that media are "mere vehicles that deliver instruction, but do not influence student achievement," because it is the content of the medium–not the medium itself that influences achievement. His argument seemed persuasive for a moment, but two questions kept coming to my mind: what does Clark mean by "media," and what forms of electronic technology were available to learners in 1983? Clark mentioned television and computers, but certainly there are more instructional media than those two gadgets. Also, I remember the monochrome educational games on DOS of the early 1980s. I do not think that they compare well to the computerized instructional tools of today, nor was the internet available to the masses then.

The use of television and computers in education does not improve instruction, according to Clark. If the instruction does happen to be more effective in those media it is due to more effort having been made in the instructional design of those materials. Well, I think that perhaps some media facilitate better instructional design. Furthermore, some media make it easier for students to acquire information and free up their time to acquire more in less time. For example, I look at the folks in my classes who have their own lap top computers and wireless access to the internet. Owning and using computers does not make them smarter. Neither does it make the information go to their brains better, but my classmates are able to look up subject matter on the web while in class. They able to update wikis and view and download information relevant to the class discussion immediately. I cannot and, therefore, have to wait until class is over to go to a computer elsewhere to do research. My classmates with the lap tops meanwhile are able to move on to further learning opportunities.

I was glad that we had Kozma’s article to respond to and rebuff Clark’s argument that there should be a moratorium on media research. Kozma shared many feelings of mine that arose when I read Clark’s article. One thing that remained unclear to me however, was the definition of "media." While Kozma went on to discuss books, television, computers and "multimedia" which included slides, sound recordings, interactive video and hypermedia, it seems to me that there are many more types of instructional media. What about lectures, field trips, conferences, discussion groups, models, simulations and role playing to name a few examples? Are these not media? They may not all involve the use of electronic gadgets, but they are media that facilitate and enhance the transmission of knowledge. I believe that all information transfer is mediated, and some media are more effective in meeting that end. Certainly, we should continue researching how media influence and affect learning, for to say that media do not influence learning is absurd.