Blogging along today from the Renaissance Hotel in Dallas – AECT conference headquarters! The lobby is still quite busy; folks are queued up trying to check in, visiting in the comfy chairs, etc.
Attended an excellent session by Reigeluth and John Keller (the grad student at Indiana, not the ARCS pioneer) about trying to reach terminological agreement in the field of Instructional Technology. They have a fairly comprehensive list of terms associated with instructional theory (though it was missing anything like affective, intentional, conative, etc.), and initial definitions for each term. Apparently this will be the second chapter of Green Book Three.
Registration stayed busy throughout the day and late into the evening. Lucky student volunteers worked the computers double checking name spellings and affiliations, printing name badges on demand.
Nate Lowell (Ubex Unknownis) led an interesting discussion panel talking about issues relating to distance education on which I participated. For some unknown reason I was struck by a fit of sobriety and acted as a voice of reason in the group, trying to remind folks that we need to understand the instructional problem ? and that media can interact with instructional strategies, and should. We need some kind of rigorous medium analysis.
Dave Jonassen talked about solving story problems in his usual colorful style. He?s been doing work on solving physics story problems and has designed an environment to ?either scaffold or two-by-four, which ever you want to call it? people through the process. Jeroen (4C-ID model) made the comment that since problem solving is a skill, why not just teach it like we teach other skills?
Then there was an excellent presentation on narrative instruction. Bruner is the foundation of this research. ?Narrative is a change in the meaning of experience,? Gowin, 1981. Talked about discursive versus nondiscursive narrative. ?Narrative instruction occurs when a learner is involved in a dialogic relationship with the content.? Cases, narrative simulation, anchored instruction, work stories, and Socratic dialog are all examples of narrative instruction. (Apparently Van Dyke has an excellent book on discourse analysis which touches on this topic.)
Came down at the end of the day to find the Penn State GA’s doing their volunteer time behind the AECT Book Table — and they’re selling my book! w00t! I signed a few copies just for kicks…