Goal 5
Demonstrates a plan for continued
professional development
As I finish up this program, I find that there are several
opportunities that I can look forward to: instructional material for my office,
building an interactive website on visiting the dentist, creating oral health
chapters for children’s textbooks, and educating teachers about oral health.
Instructional
material for the reception area monitor
When writing my Jury 1, I really
didn’t know how exactly what I’ve been learning was going to apply to my work.
I knew that one day I would like to teach dental hygiene at Lewis and Clark,
but couldn’t see how this degree would apply to my current career as a dental
hygienist. The other day, the staff at my dental office was talking about ways
to make the monitor in the reception area more educational for the parents and
patients as they wait. Right now we play cartoons and a video about dental care
from the AAPD (American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry). We were talking about
frequently asked questions such as, “Why should my child get sealants?” It was
suggested that we make a video or a PowerPoint slide show to answer these
questions, to educate the parents. The business consultant that was sitting in
our meeting said something like, if you have someone who could make these up,
that would be an excellent way of educating the parents as they wait for their
children. All eyes looked towards me. I said, “Well, that is basically what I’m
getting my Master’s in.” I think that it’s going to be fun to see if I can
really apply what I have learned in this program to these slideshows.
In the many different projects that
I’ve done in this program, I have learned several ways to tackle this problem.
Most would start off with making objectives and going from there. I have
learned that I need to think of the different theories I would like to apply
when creating these instructions.
I know that I don’t have all the
professional skills to make the best presentation yet, so I’ll need to go and
find these through continued professional development. I will need to do some
tutorials on PowerPoint since I feel that I’m still quite the novice at this
program. I want the slideshows to play at a speed where people can easily read
each slide so I need to know about timing. Also, because I know that the people
aren’t going to sit there and just read a silent slideshow, there needs to be
audio. Here I’ll need to learn how to insert this into the slide show and time
the slides accordingly. I believe that I can find tutorials on this on the
Window’s website or through “help” on PowerPoint.
If we choose to do some video, I’m
going to need to do some research on better video editing programs than Movie
Maker. This was adequate for my IT 597 project, but we want our productions to
look more professional. Then, I will need to learn how to use this program. In
creating the videos I may need to do a little research on what makes a good
video a great video so that they don’t come across as boring. I want them to be
interesting and lively so that the parents and patients will be engaged in
them. I will start my research on-line. If that doesn’t get me where I need to
go, then I will look at community colleges to see if they have any short
courses on learning the programs.
Creating an interactive website to teach children about
visiting the dentist
IT 486 really sparked a fire in me.
I really really want to be able to
create an interactive site for children to learn about visiting the dentist.
There are so many children out there, and adults for that matter, who are just
terrified of going to the dentist. Most dentists and hygienists are very nice people
and just want to help their patients. However, I don’t have the skills in
webpage development and interactive media to be able to achieve this vision.
In the last 2 years, I learned that
I need to be very vigilant in keeping to a well thought out plan to make a
website user friendly. I also learned that when working with an instructional
website, I should keep my learning theories close at hand to be sure that I’m
not straying too far that it’s just “fun” with no real learning occurring.
To do this, I’m going to need to research
web design and start doing some active reading about it. I will also need to do
some experimentation with the different directions that this research might
take me. I’ve done a quick search on the internet and there is tons of stuff
out there on web design. Since this is the big thing right now, I think it’s
going to be very easy to find some instruction on this that will make sense to
me.
I will also need to research some
programs that would make this easier. I’m sure that there is plenty of
information on-line about this. Kompozer is an OK program for beginners. But,
everything I’ve done looks like it
was done by a beginner. Since I’m supposed to be a professional at
instructional design, I would like what I design to end up looking
professional. There are way too many WYSWYG (what you see is what you get)
programs out there for me to go back to learning HTML. Although, as you’ve read
in my goal 2, it’s not a bad idea to keep an HTML book handy just in case!
Creating oral health chapters for children’s textbooks
One of the goals I talked about
initially when people asked me why I was getting a Master’s degree in IT was to
someday write the chapters in elementary textbooks on oral health. I feel that
they don’t do the topic justice. They make it mundane and don’t really stress
the importance of oral health and its impact on overall health. I have learned
in this program that I am very capable of doing this. I can see me using
Morrison’s ISD model to create some very exciting chapters for different
levels. Now my goal is to seek out a company that would let me do just that
because I’m even more determined to do this.
I will again need to research,
probably on-line and in the library, to accomplish this. The research as
applies to instructional technology would be other models of ISD that might be
pertinent to this sort of project. I would want to use the best model for me
that I can find. Morrison’s model is great and I feel that I have a good handle
on it since we went into great detail studying and applying it in IT 510.
However, I would want to be sure that I have the knowledge of other models so
that I can choose the best one for the job.
Educating teachers on oral health
The other day, the office manager at
my office was talking to the Superintendent of Shiloh schools. He was really
questioning her about what it is we do when we go out to school to educate the
children on oral health. The idea was brought out that he would like the
teachers to be educated better about oral health and how they can teach this to
their students. Since I have talked about the fact I would like to write the
chapters on oral health as mentioned above, my office manager felt free to
mention that I was going to very soon finish my degree in IT. It sounded like
the Superintendent was very excited about the fact that one of the hygienists
was finishing up with an IT Master’s degree who would most likely like to help.
What an exciting opportunity!
I learned some about the adult
learning theory in IT 500 and IT 510. I like that I have a base knowledge on
this theory. However, I will need to delve deeper into the theory to really
have a workable knowledge of it. I’ll need to find several papers to really
learn how to teach adults in the best possible manner. I will use this theory
to help guide me in creating instruction for the teachers. I don’t feel like I
have enough knowledge to use it without further reading and refreshing my
memory of what I already know. I should be able to find ready reference both
on-line and in the public library for this. Even though I won’t have access
on-line to Lovejoy Library anymore, I’ll still be able to physically go there
to read any materials they have.
Conclusion
When I first wrote this goal for
Jury 1, it was very “I need to write something so here it is.” As I started
editing for Jury 2, I really felt like I had nothing else to say. After writing
out some goals for my future and thinking more about what I might actually be
able to do to continue to grow with all of the knowledge I have gained, I’m
much more excited about this goal. I now feel that I’ve focused a little on
where I need to go in the future with this degree that I started out wanting
“just to have a Master’s”.