The most important thing I learned this mini-semester is the
importance of instructional design. Quite honestly, I had never heard of
instructional design before this course. Of course I had sat through many
professional development trainings (what teacher hasn’t?!); but I never understood
what made some of the trainings amazing and some of them incredibly boring and
meaningless. Now I know that the beneficial trainings I have been a part of
must have had a solid instructional design; whereas with the meaningless
trainings lacked good instructional design. Instructional design is the roadmap
to a successful lesson or training. A presenter/educator may know where their
destination is; but that is not beneficial if they do now know exactly how they
are going to get there.
In my opinion, good instructional design is similar to a good
classroom lesson. Are there lesson goals/objectives posted and made known to
the audience? Does the lesson properly cover the goals/objectives? Has the
teacher/trainer provided activities that are related to the goals/objectives? Are
the students/participants actively engaged? Were the goals/objectives successfully
accomplished by the participants? If the answer to each of these questions is “yes!” then I believe the
lesson/training has met the requirements for good instructional design.
The number one thing I want to make sure I include in my
future trainings is good, meaningful learning activities. “The two key issues
for all activities are: (1) that they must be directly related to the
objectives and (2) that they provide the trainees with feedback or information
about their performance” (Piskurich, 2015, p. 175). Activities, as long as they
are meaningful, are a good way to keep attendants engaged and focused.
I will be conducting a training on the basics of, and how to
set up and use ClassDojo. This training will be provided to the teachers of
Hampton Cove Elementary School. Hampton Cove is a PBIS school this year; so
using ClassDojo to supplement PBIS is a schoolwide expectation for the year. My
training will start with a presentation. I will introduce ClassDojo and personally
demonstrate how to set up and use the ClassDojo program. I will provide details
about the “cool” features of the program and give them any tips and tricks I
have discovered throughout my years of implementing it in my classroom.
Next, I will walk the teachers through the process of actually
setting up their accounts and classes on ClassDojo. These steps will also be
displayed on a PowerPoint presentation for the teachers to reference throughout
the school year. This presentation and other resources will be placed on the ClassDojo Padlet page I created
specifically for this training.
Once all the classes are set up, the teachers will partner up
and take turns acting as students and teachers. The “student” will have various
cards depicting a real-life incident that could occur during the school year.
The teacher will identify what positive behavior is being demonstrated and
award the necessary point type.
