Section #4 Assignment

Chapter 14

   I am an intern in a high school and a member of the school board visited the school and noticed that the students were using cell phones and playing games on school computers and IPads.  This generated an e-mail to all instructors banning the use of cell phones in halls and classes while also banning playing computer games on school equipment at any time.  During the next few days I monitored the students and asked them to not play games on the computers.  The students are complying but I can only guess about how long it will last.

There were very few details in the new orders and many questions were not answered.  Could the instructors use an exception to the game playing rule to give the students and incentive to finish work promptly?  That has been the practice in the past.  Students can, and do, sync with the computers to do work in the class room and at home.  Should this also be banned?  I seriously doubt if any teachers will be approaching management with questions before parents start showing up at the front door.

Chapter 15

Performance support systems supply support to workers,

with information about how to perform task(s),

1. Acts as a broker to find information,  
2. Provides an internal data base,
3. Provides access to certain outside data bases,
4. And the support may be manuals located in the work space (Reiser & Dempsey, pp 148-149, 2012).

The above issue would have been softened if there had been some call for input from the faculty.  This could have come in the form of a blog, available only to people concerned) in which the instructors could have discussed the issues.  By not having this very simple Web 2.0 feature available to instructors and management, a possible crisis could have been avoided.  Faculty and staff only have a very short e-mail to justify abruptly stopping a practice that has been in effect for several years.

Chapter 16

According to the Reiser & Dempsey (pp 158-159, 2012) most organizations usually have only four kinds of knowledge.  These four kinds of knowledge consist of:

1. Explicit knowledge is usually considered to be text documents, web sites, and manuals.
2. Tacit knowledge is knowledge that you can see. Many times this knowledge is not documented.
3. Common knowledge that is known by all those who need to know about it.
4. Undiscovered knowledge is the grates challenge and is a very big problem for business.  This is customer, market, and competitor information that they do not have yet.

I learned another definition of knowledge in business management class and it is “Knowledge is actionable data (source unknown).”

To have an effective knowledge management system the knowledge has to be accessible, peer-to-peer sharing of data, and the information has to be collected and codified.  To be most effective the knowledge would most likely have to be partnered with a support system.  Without a way to access the knowledge, the knowledge would be useless.

In the case of my issue with misunderstood directives and vague policy statements, a knowledge base would have to be continually available and updated with new information.  There is a web site with policy and rules but it is not updated on a regular basis.  The faculty would be helped if they could point to a web site with up to date information.

Chapter 17

One type of learning is to visit locations were practices are being performed that you want to learn about.  Go to vineyard to learn about grape growing and wine making.  Learn about recreation by visiting parks and playgrounds.  Googling is one way to learn about the world, but is also important to see life yourself.  In the class room it is possible to let the students, with some direction, do research on subjects in groups. 

I would like to see photo design classes work as partners to learn Photo Shop.  It is very boring to listen to the detailed instruction for how to modify a still life photo.  Students are very interested in using the computer and it would be good to let them try to learn more on their own.

References:

Reiser, Robert A. and Dempsey, John V. (2012). Trends and Issues in Instructional Design and Technology, 3td ed. Allyn & Bacon, 501 Boylston street, Boston, Ma, 02116. (pp. 96-102).