AnQi's SELECTION OF TOPIC

Topic: Primary School Science – Plant system (Lower Block)

Goals and Objectives:

• Given a diagram of a plant system, students must be able to identify the different parts of plants and state their functions without fail.
•  Students must be able to compare how different plants has different characteristic
• Student must be able to compare how different factors affect the plant growth.
• To provide a user with memorable and fun learning environment to suit all different types of learners.

Target audience:

My target audience is lower primary school children. Ages between 7 to 9  years old. Kids in their young age usually like colorful and interactive animations to capture their attention. They need a lot of games and activities in the site to sustain their attention span.They love sounds and animation,so a video animation should be included.Thus, the content of the e-learning package will include lectures slides with narrations and a short animation, with the animation, children can interact with the background or mouse over to items and character in the story.Users will also be able to see notes from the topic at the end.

User will be able to move on to play a game which must be related to the topic plants and it has to have different levels to suit different learners.

There will also be a short close passage quiz to act as a formative assessment, to ensure or give a feedback on the child learning, the teacher would then be able to assess and help the student with question to make them explore and learn independently.

Will it interest the target audience?

Yes. It will be interesting to the children because there will be a lot of colorful animation and activities that will be so much more interesting compare to a textbook in class.

Will the target audience benefit?

Yes. The animation will help the students have a more memorable learning and with games they are able to renew what they have learn in the topic in the animation and lastly with the quiz the teacher are able to assess their understanding and is able to prompt them with questions to prompt and have them to explore their own answer.

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Needs of Assessment:

Describes the general topic which they wish to develop an instructional program.

Generally science is an important part everyday life.School teachers are prompt to encourage to develops students scientific skills in their everyday life, such as observing trends patterns and analyzing data from media reports.Helping them to be adaptable to scientific and technological advances .They are also required to teach students to be able to make informed decisions that are also related to science and technology.Students are also requires to have a social perspective and understand that they have an important role and impact to the society.Other than that the important thing about plant system is to develop students understanding place of humanity in the universe and to show care and concern in the environment.Teachers will also focus in teaching them the keywords that is important and the relationship between different topics.

Describe who are the learners. Include any relevant learner.

My learners will be primary school kids age from 7 to 9. There of course be 3 different types of learner.

Visual Learners.

• Learn by seeing, watching demonstrations
• Like descriptions, create an image in their mind when reading
• Recognize words by sight
• Remember faces, forgets names (good with a map)
• Have a vivid imagination
• Are not easily distracted by sounds
• Organize work, make lists
• Tend to be quiet in conversations, don’t usually talk at length
• Prefer visual arts over music 

They would prefer more towards prefer to have activities that is related to diagrams and pictures. So there would interactive games and also animation to help them in learning.

Auditory Learners

• Learn through verbal instruction, listening
• Like to read plays (dialogue)
• Tend to move lips when reading
• Use sounds to spell words
• Remember names, forgets faces (good with oral directions)
• Tend to talk under their breath
• Are easily distracted by noises
• Talk themselves through problems
• Like to listen in conversations, but also love to talk and can do so at length
• Prefer music over visual arts
• Likes to take notes

They prefer to have sound and words provided in their learning, so therefore they will benefit more in lecture slides and cross word puzzle activities.

Kinesthetic Learners.

• Learn through direct involvement
• Prefer to read stories with a lot of action, may fidget when reading 
• Are often poor spellers 
• Remember best when they have done something (need to travel the route)
• Do not attend to visual and/or auditory input so they may appear distracted
• Fidget a lot, find reasons to move around, play with objects
• Tend to gesture when speaking
• Prefer dance, sculpture, and other “physical” arts over purely visual/auditory 

They prefer to learn in things hands on and they just could focus if there is too much distraction, so therefore in our animations and lecture we must be careful not to put in too much text and pictures.So therefore in the animation they are able to mouseover and interact with it, to sustain their attention and focus on learning.

Describe the instructional need.

 Visual Learners.

Direct instruction is needed as they tend to have a vivid imagination.So to my advantages, they would learn better if my website can implement a structure overview. A Structured Overview is verbal, visual or written summary or outline of a topic. It purpose is to help students related the learning idea to what they have already as a whole.It is the process of “organizing and arranging topics” to make them more meaningful.In my website i will include a structure overview in my animation.

Auditory Learners

Independent instruction is needed as they tend to like to talk through problems themselves and they are easily distracted by sounds.So they need to learn independently, with the help of the slides with narration, they can choose to read or to play the narration as learn best either in reading or through listening.Reading for meaning helps them to revise and bring back what they have experience and learn previously and for them to construct their own interpretation and whether it is relevant to what they learn.

Kinesthetic Learners.

Experiential instruction is needed as they tend to need to experience something to make it memorable for them remember.Learning in sense where the learner is able recall what he have learn when he did something.So it is important to have them experience and do hands on games and interesting story animation in website.

For all 3 types of Learners

Indirect instruction is needed as everyone learns through constructing their own knowledge and interpretation, be it from games, reading or even a structure overview.It does not necessary means they have learn the correct concept.So the quiz in my website will be able to help students to identify whether they have got the correct concept or they need to learn from their mistakes in their own interpretation.

Describe why you think the need can be addressed by instruction?

It is needed because we learn and construct our knowledge different and we might prefer a certain type of learning more and we learn better.So to maximize our learning , instructions are needed

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Goals Description and Statement:

Who are the learners that you want to accomplish your goal?

My learners will be primary school kids age from 7 to 9.

What learners should be able to do?

• Given a diagram of a plant system, students must be able to identify the different parts of plants and state their functions without fail. 
• Students must be able to compare how different plants has different characteristic 
• Student must be able to compare how different factors affect the plant growth.

What tools will be available to them as they attempt to accomplish it?

Lectures slides with narration, short interactive animation, games and notes

How could you tell when learners accomplished the goal?

I could when they are able to complete and get full marks in my close passage quiz.

AnQi's Website Evaluation

BBC-KS2 Bitesize

Abouts
BBC's Ks2 Bitesize is an educational website from BBC network. It is for children from primary 1-3. It is a website that hosts as an archive that has information and games for 3 subjects.(English, Maths and Science.) and in each subject it is divided into different topics.In each topic, it has 4 steps to learning.First games, secondly reading,thirdly watch a video and lastly a quiz.It is systematic and it caters to the needs of different learners(kinesthetic,auditory and visual).It also can be used by teachers as a teaching material and activities for students.

Interface Design
It has a good design on the visual perspective.It has a good proximity and similarity on items that should be classify together.Like separating different items with boxes and different color and their placement. With colorful picture and words to guide students, it is useful for teachers to gain their attention and helps in independent learning for students.

It meets the needs of the user.It is has a simple and easy for users to navigate around the websites.The buttons have words and pictures to help its user.It also has instruction that explain briefly about the topic on the top.When clicked into each topic,the user will be able to choose the different chapter of the topic.

 

The users then can click on the game to play and they can choose which one of the activities they want to do first.When they mouse over the icon, immediately, a star would appear to indicate that they can click on the icon.The arrow is also a tip for students to go through step by step.All of the icons can be click and it gives student a control of their own learning to do whatever activities is chosen.

When an activity is chosen, at the bottom of the screen, they will be icons of other activity to allow students to go to activities that they have not done.

Games  


All of the games are closely related to topic, In the game it will display the objective before u start the game. and it also can be displayed in  blog or website with codes provide.It is really useful to teachers to put in their school website.

Reading 

The reading material is short and simple for the student to understand.It has graphics as an example to help student understand better.The sentences has words in bold that indicate that it is a keyword or it is important. It does not squeeze all the information to 1 page but separated it into different where student can click next page or previous.It helps by not overloading their brain, hence they can understand better.

Video
The video is loadable and it is able to play without stopping for buffering.But i do not like the video beacuse it seems like it has not been updated for long and the characters are not that attractive.But it differs from user.

Quiz
The Quiz is useful for teachers to assess how well they have learn using the website and the quiz can be marked by the computer and it also provides the answer for the student.But the teacher will need to give a further explanation.The quiz also can printed out for students.The disadvantage of the quiz is that they are all mulitple choice, it may not be the best way to assess the student.

 Before Marked

 
Marked Quiz.

Overall i think this is an excellent website.

KidsKnowIt Network

Abouts 
This is a website is from the USA. IT started out as a teacher's classroom website, and their motive for creating this website is to make learning free for everyone as long as they have internet access. Since it is a free website, they often rely on advertiser to keep the website working.I feel that it is unprofessional for an education filled with advertisements.It also has tons of information,games,3D animation learning movies and free music about many topics which includes:

	Animals		Geology
	Astronomy		History
	Biology		Human Bio
	Chemistry		Math
	Dinosaurs		Memory
	Geography		Spelling

 They did not classify the their topics into a certain subject like example like human bio and animals can be group under science.But instead, for each topic they created a different site.

 When clicked, it goes to individual site.

Interface Design 

The interface is very messy with too many things squeeze in together,It has poor organization and proximity.It confuses the user of how they navigate around the website.They are many redundant information on the site, they should be remove as it can lessen the over crowding of the site.

Although the website is very messy, it has a lot of animation and colorful and realistic diagram and icons.I think this really gets the attention of the user and it makes their learning more memorable.

They also included their  facebook and twitter links on their main page.I think this is a good way to spread the word about the site and it makes it easier and fast.With social website being popularly use today, i am sure it is useful for teachers to connect with student through facebook and twitter about this site. They could also update their users about what going on with the site. I think this is a great way to interact with the user knowing more about what they want and what we can offer them.

 To compensate on the messy interface of the website, they included a search bar.This good cause it gives the user to search their topic instead of having to do it manually, it faster and it benefits the user.but I think that it is unprofessional and inappropriate to put advertisement on an educational website.

 Reading  

The reading information has too much information and the key words are not highlighted.Too much words are difficult for some learners to remember.And there is no indication of what the user has selected it is confusing for the user.

3D Animation Movies

They have lots have 3d animation videos but the problems is it is only located at the site of the main page.I think for users who glance through the website may miss the icon to click for the movies.

They have a range of videos with different topic and if a movie is selected, it will be something like this, the video will first start of with the intro of the objects then user may click start the movie to play:

Start of movie

The narrator is reading off the text on the screen.It is redundant and it distracts the user and it is a cognitive load for users which makes it difficult for them to learn.The yellow color background is too bright, it may be a discomfort for some users.

Games

The game is closely related to the topic.It is good that they have objectives on the start of the game.But there is too much information that is not directly link to the game which is not appropriate at all as it may confuse the user.

Overall i feel that this is not a good website as there are too much errors and interface problems that i have mention on the above.

Kids National Geographic

Abouts
The Kids National Geographic educational site is from Nation Geographic. It focus more on general information like people around the world and its wildlife , although its is not closely related to school subject, it teaches child about moral values and being responsible and care for the environment, wildlife and less fortunate people around the world..The website is being put into 8 categories, animals,games, video,stories, activities, people and places, photo and blog.

Interface Design

The interface is filled with colours and it has a good colour contrast and proximity.It has been organised. It does not confuse the user.It also has slides show when they display a feature i think this good as it saves space.It also a great search bar.I think the advertisement are okay as it a product of their site.The banners at the side is also good as they are promoting charity work

Animals 

I feel that in an education website sufficient and relevant information is important, it has a wide range of animals and they are classify in groups.In the animal page, it also has a previous to allow user to have a short instead press back of the page.It also has a good instruction of telling users what they are able to do.

When the animals is selected it will lead to this page:

It is wonderful that there is many tool provide to allow users have interaction with the information they learn.It also allows printing.The information is overcrowding and it has page navigations.There also many picture to allow user who want to see more of the animal.I think it is good as it gives more than what the user would expect(like theres only 1 image in other website). Users are also able to share information with friends.After the user is finished with the page they also have other choices that allow them to choose which ever animal they are interested in.

Video
There is some minor issues with the loading, i guess that the files are too big, it may not be able to satisfy users who are hasty and did not wish to wait.

After loading it would be something like this:

I like the interface, because it has many options for the user, and there is also a feedback to inform the user that the link can be clicked.There is also a control for the user and i really feel that as a user if i see some interesting videos i would like to share with my friend, with share function its easy, it was something that i was not expecting, they really think about the users needs. Short description is also provided and it is short and clear for users to understand.

Games
There is wide range of game that it is provided, but the only think i did not like about it as it must be bought for users to enjoy the full game, It's too commercial and i feel that many users would avoid playing the games as they know they could not finish the game.

An example of the game:

The game have a clear objective and it has control and menu for the user to change to suit their need.

Reading

The reading material is too long and it feels like a newspaper filled with information, it cannot sustain users attention but effort is that they put a picture that gives a clear view of what is important in the reading material

Overall i feel that this is a great website, with the color and realistic drawing picture many choices and information it definitely will encourage user to explore and learn about the world and wildlife

Jia De WebSite evaluation

http://www.primarygames.com/

This website is targeted to young children at around 6 to 10 year old

As you can see from above, the website is designed  based on a theme suitable for kids with all the fanciful fonts,color choice and cartoon. However the first problem with the website is that the link/buttons had over-use of colors and there is too much links. There is one section where there 15 links in the middle which are cluttered together and there several links here and there at top and bottom of the website. Sometimes, less is more and with fewer yet specific links, it allows users to navigate around the website easier.


As mentioned earlier, there is nice choice/shade of colours for the theme young children but as mentioned earlier less is more and there is no specific color theme for the website and users might feel "giddy" looking at the website because there are just so much colors,furthermore, the games are for kids

Next, English is a universal language as is used as the main language for this website but there is no other choices of languages available for people who does not have English as their main language.



Next, the good thing about this website is that they have contact us link so that if users have any problems, they could email the site administrator and this is good so that there is some interaction with the user and web administrator and they can keep the website bug-free whenever they get feedback from users but from other point of view, shouldn't the website be done with more precise thinking before publishing it so that there would be lesser negative feedback from users. If that's not the case, its like doing a website without testing out first and immediately upload it on the web and let users find out where are the bugs/flaws instead of preventing them in the first place.

Lastly, there isn't two version of the websites. What i meant by two version is that one of the website is in high quality and requires good internet connection and another one for people who have slower internet connection. This way, the website could be cater for more people instead only to people who have high internet connection


The second website : http://www.thekidzpage.com/learninggames/index.htm

The first thing that came to my mind is that this website is very messy. Everything is all over the place. Links over the places, advertisements everywhere and dull and bad choice of colors and this website did not attract my attention. It's good that they did label the buttons to indicate what page does this button lead to however, the labeling is too small and the targeted people who visits this website might have difficulty getting around the site and have to squinch their eyes and this would lead to future eye sight problems.

When i scrolled to the bottom of the page,i was stunned because they was buttons at the right hand bottom corner of the website. They should have place it together with the buttons at the top. I think they decided to do this is because they have no more space for buttons on top. This shows that they have too much buttons which are redundant. Instead,they should have use fewer specific buttons which is better and allows easier navigation throughout the site.

The next issue i want to talk about is the advertisement which was mentioned at the start. There is advertisements on the top, left and also right hand side of the page. This is bad because it waste space which can be used for other things like a links bar at the left side and most importantly. The advertisement seems to be in the "spotlight" rather than the banner which is located at the left hand top corner and this is bad because banner should always be the main item at the top and usually people click on the banner to go back to the home page and if people don't know, they would have click on the advertisement which they thought was the banner and might lead to potential spyware/malware website.

Overall, the website did target the main point which was to cater to young children but it had too much flaws and gives people the impression that the designer is half-hearted  when creating this website and thus, might not visit it again

3rd website:  http://funschool.kaboose.com/

 First look at the website, i felt that they had sufficient and nice choice of colors which blends in well with one another. There is indication of what page they would be lead to when they press what and the graphics are cute, which is suitable for young children. There is even a list of top 10 games which is good because it allows users to know which games are most popular and they might want to give it a try(attention span).However this website had thew same issues as other website, redundant links. There are links all over the pages and some links are repeated and some is in button form and some is in text form.

The next issue i want to talk about is the video at the right side. Whenever users loads finish the website, the video would play by itself without giving the user the choice whether to play it or not. A good website should allow user freedom of choice and it can be slightly irritating that each time you go to the website,the video start playing and after long term, users might get annoyed and may not want to visit the page again.

The next issue i want to talk about is the buttons at the top. I think its bad to have buttons side by side with the page main banner because it takes away the "spotlight" of the banner and users might not know where they have to click to go the main page as the banner is too small in size and is being overshadowed. At the same time, whenever the mouse is hovered over the buttons on top,there would be sound which can be annoying after some time and i felt that less is more. Over-doing things might just make it worse.


Overall, this is a "okay" website which has good and bad points at the same time but it gave me an impression that the designer spend too much time on the multimedia stuff and forget about the technical flaws it might have for users



Overall, the three website did met the requirements which is targeting to young children but the amount of flaws they have might reduce the attention span of users on the website

Step 2:

Objectives


The objective of the e-learning package is to allow users to learn subjects in the form of games and it must be able to attract attention of young children which is the targeted audience because the e-learning package is to engage students to study in a different way compared to typical learning method which is boring theories.

Thus, users should be able to find that the subjects they are taking is not as boring as what they thought after learning through games and the most important thing is that they learn something.

Target audience

The target audience is young children age between 7 to 10 year old who are primary 1 to 4 school children.

The students are from XYZ primary school who finds lessons boring and thus, always talk to their classmates and teacher find it hard to get the students to concentrate on the lessons.

The students would be learning primary school maths which is of their level of difficulty and it would definitely benefit and interest them as the game would be made as simple yet attention-seeking at the same time because learning is being brought to a new level and the main point is there don't have to flip their textbook here and there

Needs of assessment
General topic i be doing
The topic i doing on would be on multiplication and division as maths is very important in school life yet there are students who have difficulty in it. Some student after some teaching still don't get it and partly because maths requires of thinking and this tires them out easily and thus, an educational game for maths would be useful and would benefit them alot. Base on some scenario, students would be require to solve some questions in order to move to the next level and this definitely get more attention than just giving them paper with lots of questions

Relevant learners
The learners are primary 1 to 4 students and the relevant learners are the teachers and probably parents too because while teaching the students, they get to benefit from it too and they can know how to make a lesson interesting next time.

Instructional need
Students might find it hard to understand maths as currently, teachers might be teaching from textbook which can be boring after a short while and thus, students might not pay attention to it and thus, are unable to do maths questions. Thus to make the lesson fun, the educational games is set-up so to get the students attention while they get to learn at the same time.

Why the needs can be solved by instruction
 I think the needs can be solved by instruction as different students might prefer different way of studying. Some prefer practical stuff, some prefer learning through slides/videos and some prefer by audio and not everyone is born smart and thus, some people might get the hang of the topic in a short while and some need a longer time.

Goal description and statement

The learners
The learners are primary 1 to 4 students who find maths boring

What students should be able to do
The students should be able to solve the maths questions in the game and should be able to complete every level and each time they repeat the game, they should be doing better.

Tools for learner
The students would be given power point slides with narration and also the educational game itself.

Indication for completing level
When they have completed the level, they would be notification to let the know that they have successfully completed the level and each time they do wrong, there would be indication to let users know they have to attempt the same question again before they are able to move on to the next one 

Questions

 1. Definition of Instructional Design (ID). What does an ID do? Include an annotation if any.

It is the practice of maximizing the effectiveness, efficiency and appeal of instruction and other learning experiences. We accomplish this by analyzing students needs and learning goals and from there, design and develop instructional materials 

 

 2. Principles or elements of Instructional Design. Include an annotation if any.

Assessment-We can get a clear idea of the students standard by giving them test and they would get feedback from the students and at the same time, get them feedback so they would know what they could have do to done better and we can know how they feel about the assessment and we can improve from there for the next assessment

State objectives-Let the students know why they have to learn this topic and why is that topic selected for the task and why they have to accomplish this type of task

Choose target audience- We have to know who is our target audience so we can plan materials suitable for them and assessments which is more suitable for them

Select delivery method-Choose a way to present the lesson because a boring lesson can be made into a interesting one by linking stuff to students' real life experiences and things they are associated with and this would engage them to the lesson

Implementation-Have to carry out the lesson to see how whether it works or not

Evaluation- After everything is carried out,we should evaluate the students so we would know whether the lesson planned for them is working so far and from there, lesson can give feedback so we would be able to know whether the lesson was a successful one and in what way can we improve further.

 3.  Give 2 Models of Instructional Design. Include an annotation and a graphic if you find one.

         THE DICK AND CAREY SYSTEM APPROACH MODEL 

• Assess needs to identify instructional goal(s) – to identify what the learner are expected to do after the end of the instruction
• Conduct instructional analysis – to determine a step-by-step of what learners are doing when they are performing the goal; to determine what skills and knowledge are required
• Analyze learners and contexts –  It is to analyze and identify what types of  learners they are,what prior knowledge and component skills that have. Their preferred way of learning and also how can us as the designer suit their needs of delivering the content.
• Write performance objectives – to specify what it is the learners will be able to do with the statements of the 3Cs, criteria,condition and competency.
• Develop assessment instruments – to develop a materials to help learners in learning consistent with the performance objectives
• Develop instructional strategy – to develop strategies in pre-instructional activities (motivation, objectives and entry behavior), presentation of information (instructional sequence, information, examples), learner’s participation (practice and feedback), testing (pretest and posttest) and follow-through activities(remediation, enrichment, memorization and transfer) 
• Develop and select instruction – to use the instructional strategies to produce the instruction, (Direct,Indirect,Interactive,Independent and Experiential strategies.)
• Design and conduct formative evaluation – to collect data that are used to identify how to improve the instruction, by using formative assessment like question and answer or even surveys.
• Revise Instruction – to use the data from the formative evaluation to examine the validity of the instructional analysis, learner and context analysis, performance objectives, assessment instruments, instructional strategies, and instruction.
• Design and conduct summative evaluation – to measure the value and success of the instruction. 

       Instructional Development Learning System

• Design a Task Analysis
• Develop Criterion Tests and Performance Measures
• Develop Interactive Instructional Materials
• Validate the Interactive Instructional Materials

 4. What is the difference between Curriculum vs. instruction?

              

Curriculum is WHAT your students are expected to learn and what you are expected to teach. It's the written standards and benchmarks that your students must pass. It is like what us as a teacher sets a goal for our students to reach.It is the objectives we set with the 3C's.

Instruction is HOW you teach your content and how your students learn it. This is where the focus of our efforts should lie.  This is where certain strategies, methods, and tools that helps different types of learners.

It like for example if your students are a kinetics learners, who prefers to learn things hand-on. As the teacher would need to apply experiential instructions, like taking the student out for a field trip to learn.Or in the case where students are audiocity learners , who prefer to writes or listen attentively in class, the teacher would need to apply direct instruction, the teacher would have to use lectures sildes to help them learn.

 5.   Explain the difference between theories of instructional design and theories of learning.

The difference is that theories of learning is to know about how different learners need different way of learning, where theories of instructional design is to apply and design a course or a material to make learning better and effective for learners.   

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