AET/541 Describe

The physical simulation of the students choosing a partner and loading up on their own classroom items enhance the learning for each student. I ask each student to choose a partner and between the two of them load up their book bag or back pack with all of their own classroom materials, like text books. Then I ask them to walk around the classroom a few times. I want the students to physically feel what it is like carrying their belongings around and to see if they can imaging pulling or pushing a hand cart with household items across the plains and over mountains. This physical simulation will allow students to work together and to describe their thoughts about the difficulty of people who moved west. Included in the storyboard is a map of the United States of America, this map has a small animated train that will move across the map, showing the students the direction (West) of the railroad. This small model will enhance the students learning by showing that the train didn't go everywhere and that most U.S. cities are built around major railroad stations or depots.

AET/541 Blog Post 2 Evaluate

By using the ideas and suggestions from the course text book called"  E-Learning and the Science of Instruction. Proven Guidelines for Consumers and Designers of Multimedia learning" By Ruth Colvin Clark and Richard Mayer, I was able to create a storyboard.  The course outline of week by week additions made the the storyboard do able. I appreciated the format. I was able to first take an idea and then each week add, take away or create something new to my storyboard. I was most impressed by the class discussion on graphics and encouraged by Clark & Mayer to make the most of the graphics and images I chose for my storyboard. At the beginning of my storyboard I thought I would add all of these pictures to "entertain" my students, then I learned that each graphic needs to have a purpose. I went back through my storyboard and included only the most necessary graphics and animation. I wanted my fifth grade audience to be engaged not entertained. I also used the principle of redundancy. My storyboard included an audio narration in a friendly human voice to read along with the visual text. This repetition of audio and visual will help my student focus and retain the lesson. I also learned about the different types of tools that you can use for a e-learning lesson, like rollover pop-ups, and click to link for other windows. I used both of these tools to enhance my learning lesson for my students. I wanted to give my students choice about which form of transportation they wanted to study first, the rollover pop-up allowed my student choice. I also linked other history events to other websites for additional learning and giving variety levels of learning.

AET 541 Blog post 1 Explain

The e-learning principles I used in my e-learning lesson were that of; worked examples, segmentation, personalization and that of pretraining. After learning about each principle for the e-learning environment I tried to change my storyboard to best fit with what was taught from the reading, classmates and instructor feedback. I was able to use graphics and text appropriate for my fifth grad audience. The principle of segmentation was used to break down each form of transportation.  I also used worked examples to help the students figure out how far in distance the travelers needed to travel. I allowed lots of questions for the student to physical and mentally answer. These questions and worked example allowed for the students to critically think about the people who traveled west, why they traveled and how they traveled. I even gave questions for the student to ask themselves if they would like to travel west during this time period. This form of questioning will allow the student to internalize and personalize their learning.