Reading Reflection Week 8

               The two ways that Instructional Design/Technology has been used in business and industry that I find the most interesting are using technology to work in teams and looking at learner cultural factors.

                Using technology to work in teams in a Kindergarten classroom setting really didn’t occur to me until I read this article.  I use a lot of technology in my classroom, but most of the time the students are working on their own or together using the same computer.  A way in which I could incorporate using technology to work in teams, in my classroom, would be to communicate with pen pals via the web.  In my class, we have pen pals with a neighboring school.  The students write letters and draw pictures to each other and we see each other once a month at field trips.  However, by only seeing their pen pals once a month (and they don’t really have a chance to interact due to the fact that we are on field trips), means they really don’t have a lot of face-to-face interactions.  By using Skype or another type of video conferencing, the students would get to know their pen pals better.  This would in turn help them connect with their pen pals and therefore write more meaningful letters (teaching them how to write a letter is pretty much the whole point we assign pen pals anyway).

                I thought it was very interesting that businesses are taking learners’ cultural factors into account.  This could definitely be done in my classroom and is already somewhat being done in my classroom now.  When I get a new group of students, I am constantly evaluating how each student learns.  Some of them learn best in a one-on-one situation while others learn just fine in a group setting.  Some students need a visual while others can learn simply by listening.  Another way this relates to my classroom is not only in learning styles, but in communication styles as well.  Some students have a hard time expressing how they feel and it sometimes comes out through physical aggression.  Other students are very emotional and sometimes have a hard time controlling their emotions.  Whatever the case may be, a student’s learning style and method of communication is directly related to their culture or home life.  One example I can think of is a student I have who has a difficult home life.  He has built up anger and has a hard time expressing that anger.  He also craves attention which can sometimes be shown through aggression.  When I first got this student and started noticing these behaviors, I had to look into why and what caused him to act this way.  Was he just simply adjusting to a new classroom environment or was it something more.  I think it is great that businesses are taking the same kind of approach (only the more cultural side of things as oppose to home life) when training staff members.