Storyboard Reflection - Blog Post #1
Thursday, February 21, 2013

Explain the e-learning principles your lesson includes and how they promote critical thinking skills.

My storyboard centered around the concept of “Updating Class Web Sites for 21st Century Learners.” This miniature online course offered technology-savvy teachers an opportunity to add clustered hyperlinks and organized photo galleries to their class web site as well as integrate social media into their classroom’s web presence. This storyboard incorporated all of the pillars of e-learning into its instructional message for learners.

Firstly, the storyboard included a significant amount of pre-training. On all three counts, the hyperlinks, photo galleries, and social media, the learners were given visual examples along with lengthy explanations. After carefully reviewing the material, learners were to then brainstorm ways in which to incorporate all of these into their existing class web site. Later on in the storyboard, a differentiated assignment was given that had the learner create and publish one of these three activities that actually utilized the skill they just learned.

From a cognitive standpoint, this storyboard fit into not only the pre-training and personalization aspect of e-learning, but this dovetailed nicely into the very explicit worked examples. The mental processes that learners put into this assignment, I feel, is exceptional. By design, I created these activities to be very realistic, easily navigable, as well as applicable to their classroom. These conclusion activities, integrating the pre-training and personalization aspects of e-learning, are highly metacognitive. That is to say that learners have ample creative room to demonstrate that they are thinking about their learning. This type of critical thinking is useful in that it aids the learner in a reflection along with a self-assessment of their grasp of the material. I am pretty proud of the work that I’ve done with this storyboard, but equally happy in creating a usable product for interested learners.

 

Folks - Book One: History Repeats Itself