Electronic Portfolio
In the Pursuit of Rank 1 Standing
Jeffrey L. Jones

Overview

Standard 1
Standard 2
Standard 3
Standard 4
Standard 5
Standard 6
Standard 7
Standard 8
Standard 9
Standard 10

List of documents associated with this portfolio

Scoring Guide:
3 = Meets indicator, high competency
2 = Meets some components of indicator, improvement required
1 = Does not meet indicator, instruction and practice required.

Freedomseas.net

My Goals as a Student of Instructional Systems Design

As I finish my third year as a student of Instructional Systems Design, my appreciation and understanding of that discipline have spurred a wide range of changes, both within my current professional responsibilities in Fayette County Schools, and through initiatives and capabilities developed independently. The process of designing instruction for alternative delivery has enhanced and stimulated my relationship with a wide range of technologies, including multimedia, the World Wide Web, video production, and e-communications. My goals as an Instructional Designer have, as a result of my studies, expanded well beyond my initial expectations.

My professional responsibilities in the Office of Educational Technology vary wildly from those of a traditional classroom teacher, hence the Standards, as they are written, do not exactly match the competencies I should address there. However, the Standards provide a framework for general professional competencies within which I feel I have made great strides while a student of Instructional Design. In many cases, instructional technologies provide a forum through which classroom practice standards can be expanded and enhanced beyond the limits of time, space, and audience, making my design of and participation in such capabilities an excellent source of documentation of teacher growth. In any case, since I provide direct instruction within the classroom, teach professional development, provide leadership in the development and support of instructional initiatives and classroom tools, most of the Standards are directly reflected within this document and the referenced materials.

I would like to think that my experiences and abilities as a user of technology are fairly extensive - at least by the measures applied to educational use. These experiences span almost 20 years, and include microcomputer lab management, part-time data management programming, teaching of computer programming, and positions as a school technology coordinator and network manager . It has become clear, especially since joining the Fayette County Schools district Office of Educational Technology, that this is truly my calling, and that my experience-gained skills and insights can serve education better with a grounding in theory, research, and an examination of practice beyond my current arena. This is why I am pursuing a Rank 1, and eventually a doctorate, in Instructional Systems Design.

Currently, my professional responsibilities have placed me squarely in the middle of electronic communication, and how such capabilities can support teachers and instructional practice. As the editor of a middle school email newsletter called The E-Line, I am constantly researching and reviewing online lesson plans, software, and sources of professional support for teachers. This  resource has been, so far, well-received, but it cries out for research - Web-driven data-harvesting, analysis, and other exploration to test its usefulness in classroom practice. Another such initiative, called TIPS, is a web-delivered e-zine I produce monthly for the teachers of Fayette County as a part of my professional responsibilities there. For that medium, I have also dabbled in multimedia instructional design, piloting a video-driven event-streamed online set of professional development modules for teachers - a capability I would love to explore further if I had the time. I have also piloted direct electronically-mediated teacher-to-teacher communication - both through traditional email discussion lists and through threaded online forums.

The online forums are also one of many communication initiatives I have piloted in Fayette County for student use. Student use of technology in communication, integrated into classroom and instructional practice, has been an on-going fascination of mine, begun when I designed, built, equipped, and trained for the use of a complete student television studio with non-linear video editing capability at Bryan Station High School. Under my tutelage, this capability was also utilized by music classes, social studies classes, and English classes for collaborative projects and instructional units. Although I did not pilot it, I also coordinate the Fayette County Video-Linked Classroom, a real-time classroom sharing initiative entering its 5th year in 2003-04, when it will serve 30+ remote-access students through four video-conference-connected classes. Such initiatives display how technology can serve to address the inequities in student experience and opportunity, offering courses at high schools that had never before been able to staff them due to low enrollment and other pressures.

Although I feel I have gained skill and ability through these experiences, my interest is in learning how to maximize the usefulness of these capabilities for teacher development and support, and in support of student learning. It is my intent to develop the ability to assess these tools, and to best design their use to exploit their benefits and minimize their shortcomings. My studies in Instructional Systems Design, I feel, are the best method by which I can accomplish this.