So Many Activities!

 Of all the trainings I have attended as a teacher over the past four years, the ones that did not seem to be a complete waste of time provided me with useful information and activities that would help me incorporate this knowledge into my classroom. Activities are extremely important in a training; not only do they break up the boring lecture, but they also bring actual meaning to what the trainee is learning.

When thinking of the training I am going to conduct, I have tried to think of some activities that will be beneficial to the teachers I am training. I have thought of a variety of different, yet meaningful, activities to keep the teachers involved and motivated. I am conducting a training on the set up and implementation of ClassDojo. ClassDojo is a digital classroom management tool which provides instantaneous behavioral feedback to students, when used regularly and effectively. The best thing about ClassDojo is how easy it is to access; it can be used on any iOS and Android device, Kindle Fires, and the Internet! VIDEOThe teachers I am training are part of a Positive Behavioral Interventions & Supports (PBIS) school; and the principal wants all of them to use ClassDojo as a supplemental tool to support the implementation of PBIS throughout the school year. 

During my training, the various activities I want to incorporate include a demonstration in which “trainees observe the performance of a task or procedure as conducted by an expert, either live or on tape (Piskurich, 2015, p. 219); a practice exercise where “trainees are asked to practice performing a task” (Pirkurich, 2015, p. 220); and a simulation-style role play in which “trainees enact a situation in order to try out new skills or apply what has been learned. A training environment [will be] set up to allow the trainees to practice a task under conditions as close to those on the job as possible” (Piskurich, 2015, p. 221). The details of these activities are detailed below.

Demonstration:

o   I will personally demonstrate how to set up and use the ClassDojo program.

o   I will also provide a video using Camtasia including important information about the setup of ClassDojo and the tools it has available to teachers. Camtasia is a tool that enables you to turn a screen recording into a finalized video. It could be very beneficial in creating tutorials for teachers or students; and I can also see how it would be beneficial in a “flipped classroom” (“learners are given pre-class assignments dealing with the cognitive content of the course that require completion before the class itself” (Piskurich, 2015, p. 453).  In my case, the teachers may access this video after the training and throughout the schoolyear as a reminder on how to use the program. I feel this could be a great reference tools for the teachers. I oftentimes wish I had recorded certain trainings because I forget all the interesting details provided. With this program, the teacher will have this information at their fingertips.

Practice Exercise:

o   The teachers will create a ClassDojo account and setup their classes after watching my demonstration.

Simulation-Style Role Play:

o   The teachers will take turns acting as students and teachers. The “student” will have various cards depicting a real-life incident that could occur during the schoolyear. (ex: The boy sitting next to me lost his pencil so I gave him one of mine.) The teacher will identify what positive behavior (PBIS only focuses on positive behavior) being demonstrated and award the necessary point type.

Hopefully the teachers will find these activities useful and engaging! 

Reference: Piskurich, G. M. (2015). Rapid instructional design: Learning ID fast and right (3rd ed.). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Trainee-Centered Activities

Instructor-Led Classrooms are probably the most common setting for professional trainings. According to Piskurich (2015), classroom training should be used when:

ü  “Interaction with the trainer or other participants is important

ü  Guided discussion will lead to more learning

ü  Questions will come up that need immediate answers

ü  You have qualified facilitators in the right numbers to match the training load

ü  The trainees can afford to be away from their jobs for long periods of time

ü  The facilitators will do the traveling instead of the trainees

ü  Individualization is not critical

ü  You want more control over the training outcome” (p. 111).

What happens, though, when the facilitator has nothing planned but lecture and discussion? I’m sure we have all been to trainings like this…the facilitator lectures and provides information on the topic and then asks you to “Think-Pair-Share” with a neighbor. With this strategy, participants are given a set amount of time to think about their response, and then they are given time to discuss their thoughts with a partner or group before they are asked to share their thoughts with the entire group. Although this can be beneficial if implemented properly, we all know that those “Think-Pair-Share” conversations actually turn into…random tangents completely unrelated to the topic, or a discussion on what to have for lunch. 

In order to avoid these unrelated conversations, the facilitator needs to provide trainee-centered activities throughout the training. “The two key issues for all activities are: (1) that they must directly related to the objectives and (2) that they provide the trainees with feedback or information about their  performance” (Piskurich, 2015, p. 175). Although I have never conducted an actual training to educators, I have taught countless numbers of lessons to students. In these lessons, I provided plenty of “trainee-centered activities” to keep my students focused on the objectives and engaged in the learning. Since all of my students have laptops (Huntsville City Schools implemented a 1-1 digital curriculum in the fall of 2012), a majority of the activities I use to keep the interest of my students incorporate technology.

My favorite way to start a lesson is to activate my students’ prior knowledge of the topic. This way I can see what aspects of the material I need to focus on more, and what aspects can be breezed over. The best tools, in my opinion, for this are Kahoot and Quizizz. These are both digital “quizzes” in which students independently answer questions provided. While completing the quizzes, students are racing against their classmates to answer the questions quickly and accurately. Kahoot displays the questions and leaderboard on the teacher’s ActivBoard, while Quizizz displays the same information on the students’ devices. To try Quizizz in action from the students’ perspective, go to http://quizizz.com/join/ and type in code 932071. (I will announce the ULTIMATE winner at a later date! J)

Another tool I use during my lessons is a web strategy to foster creative thinking and cooperative learning. I use Today’s Meet in an activity similar to “Think-Pair-Share.” The students are provided with a topic, given a set time limit to think about the topic on their own, and then are given time to virtually discuss the topic with their group. (Today’s Meet allows you to create different groups and assign students to each group.) Since I am the administrator of the groups, I can see each conversation and can hold each student accountable for his/her discussion. Students know I can see what they are discussing which prevents any unrelated side conversations from happening. Also, the administrator can set the time frame allotted for the Today’s Meet conversation. By setting the time frame to just one hour (or whatever fits within the school day), this prevents students from obtaining access to this conversing tool after school hours. (Since cyberbullying is such an issue these days, the ability to control these conversations is a powerful tool for teachers.) A quick tutorial on Today’s Meet is displayed below.

Although I am not a professional training facilitator, I have been in countless trainings in which I was miserable the entire time. I feel like this has helped me in deciding what aspects of instructional design are important when planning a training. I definitely do not want my trainees to be bored and miserable while I am facilitating! Hopefully some of the tools described above can help with this issue and provide an engaging training to everyone involved.

Reference: Piskurich, G. M. (2015). Rapid instructional design: Learning ID fast and right (3rd ed.). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Why is instructional design important?

As an educator (I’m sure those of you reading this can relate) I have been required to sit through countless hours of professional development and trainings. I sometimes walked away from PD feeling refreshed and excited to begin implementing new things into my classroom. For example, this past year I was blessed with the opportunity to be a part of a math training conducted by Alex Kajitani, the Rappin’ Mathematician. He kept me engaged the ENTIRE day! I left that training feeling excited about getting back to my students and implementing new instructional techniques in my math lessons. I even bought one of his rap CDs in hopes of getting my kids just as excited about math as I was. (It worked.) My day with Alex Kajitani was definitely an example of an incredible, meaningful PD. Below is one of the Rappin' Mathematician's songs...this is just a taste on how exciting he is! I wish all presenters had this much enthusiasm!

Other times (unfortunately more often than not) I left PD wondering why I had been forced to waste so many hours of my life on something that was not beneficial at all. For example, my first year of teaching I was required to attend training on the new digital curriculum. Digital curriculum?! I love technology! I thought that training would be a blast! WRONG. We spent a majority of the morning discussing the biographies of the people who wrote the curriculum. (I wish I was kidding.) That is so amazing that these people were willing to work together to provide me and other teachers a digital curriculum, but I quite honestly did not care to hear about their childhoods and marriages. What does that have to do with a digital curriculum?  A person's time is very important, especially a teacher's time; there are plenty of things I would rather do (prepare lessons, get my classroom pretty, TEACH) than sit through a meaningless training.

So what was it that made me love the first training I mentioned and despise the second training mentioned? The answer is simple…instructional design. The first example of training had a meaningful instructional design incorporated; while the second training seemed to be thrown together at the last minute. GOOD instructional design is the most important aspect of any lesson or training.

Clearly instructional design is important…so what is it? According to Piskurich (2015), “Instructional design is a way to plan your training program from the moment you have the idea for it until the moment you complete your revisions of your first effort and get ready to run the program again. It is a working model that you can use to manage the concepts and tasks that are part of a successful training process” (p. 4). Instructional design is the roadmap to a successful lesson or training. A presenter may know where their destination is; but that is not beneficial if they do not know exactly how they are going to get there.

In my opinion, the most important aspect of the instructional design is the analysis, “what needs to be taught and what does not need to be taught in [the] training program” (Piskurich, 2015, p. 63). The facilitator needs to ensure the training provides information that is beneficial to the audience. People do not want to sit through a training in which the information is irrelevant! The analysis portion of the instructional design could help the facilitator know what the audience is expecting to learn from the training. This information could help the facilitator plan exactly what type of information and resources to provide that would deem beneficial to the attendees. A quick way of gathering this feedback is through the use of a performance gap assessment, which can be as complex as the attached example, or as simple as two questions, as stated by Piskurich (2015), “1. What performances do we need to change? 2. What behaviors in the organization do we need to change to change those performances?” (p.26), could be the difference in a successful and unsuccessful training.

Personally, I would love all future presenters, facilitators, and instructors to use an instructional design process within their trainings and lessons. It would be a better use of everyone’s time, money, and resources if things were planned out and executed properly. J

Reference: Piskurich, G. M. (2015). Rapid instructional design: Learning ID fast and right (3rd ed.). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.