Section 5 Trends and Issues in Various Settings

Section 5 was very interesting to read. It was amazing to see the different types of professional settings that instructional design effects. The different fields that IDT are: business & industry, military, health care, P-12 education, higher education and around the world. I work in the P-12 field, so my blog will reflect on one thing I learned in each chapter from the other fields and how I can adapt that to my P-12 field.

Business and Industry 

One of many things I learned in this chapter is “The Role of Instructional Designers”. According to the text book there are three categories of the role of instructional designers: sole designer, designer as consultant, and team member/leader. I believe a job is always better if everyone knows what their role is and how it works. I feel that a teacher can play a part in each role solo or simultaneously. Teacher that work without a team would be consider “solo designer”. That would be most enrichment teachers: music, art, reading, GT, PE or ELS. In the “designer as consultant”, I feel would be a librarian. The librarian serves as the middle man between the teachers and technology and administration and provides feedback to both sides. Under the “team member/leader” category, this could include anybody on our campus. The important thing I got from this section is that everyone has a role and part and it needs to be clearly established in order for projects to work out successfully.

Military

One thing I learned in the military chapter was the ever changing roles and responsibilities of the military. I learned that the military has a plan/goal about the technology and its future. If you were to look at my field of work you would see a lot of teaching styles with technology that are all over the scale and no one really knows there role or wants to take responsibility in technology . A tiny example: I have teachers that use smart boards, some use dry erase boards and some still use chalk boards. What I take from this chapter is that I need to be involved in transitioning myself to modern technologies in my classroom. I need to always look at what the future holds and not get stuck in a teaching rut. I need to be the facilitator that moves my students from the past to the future.  There is so much more I learned from this chapter. The military is so organized and well put together, unlike most public school systems.

Health Care Education

One thing I learned about health care education is the Hippocratic Oath. As teachers we have an understood oath we personally take, but we don’t have an oath and guidelines that set the standards for our conduct. That is something I think should be implemented in education. Now that I think about it, why would we not as educators of children not sign an oath of conduct? Yes, we do sign a computer usage oath but that is not really the same. Something that really strikes me as strange and curious of why?

 

 

Higher Education

The overall thing I learned from this chapter is that being in higher education is a lot like my job of P-12 education and that it’s global. We all basically have the same responsibility to: teach, consult, and stay on top of the latest trend, be trained, train others and serve our community. Both job fields takes a lots of time and energy and some make more than others just depends where you work. What I take from this chapter to my job is that we do it because we love it. Education is a labor of love and no one can understand that unless they do it. No matter what demands our careers hold for us, if we are trained and prepared we will succeed and so will our students.

Around the World

What I found new in this chapter is how the public schools in Japan are staffed. The Japanese tradition only allows schools only hire principals from within the school and the principals are ex-teachers over the age of 55. And that each individual teacher’s background is specialized in one or another subject area.  And the Japanese teachers teach their subject without any help from others. What I take from this is how thankful I am to be working in the USA. As a US teacher we have support and training to help us become better teachers for our students. The next time I start to complain about my job, I will always think back to this chapter and remember maybe I don’t have it as bad as I think and smile.