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Jacob Mroczkiewicz EDCI 270 April 22, 2014 Project #3 Narrative After having completed the third project in the rigorous course of EDCI 270 at Purdue University, I can honestly say that the experience was worthwhile. Many preservice educators at Purdue (myself included) did not enter college thinking, Yeah, I want to study Education, or, First things first: Im going to become a teacher. There is nothing wrong with this; sometimes Plan B is the most viable and rewarding avenue. With this, many pre-service educators at Purdue also go into such 200- or early 300-level courses knowing nothing about educational technology or instructional design. That is where the Project 3 experience carries its greatest benefits. What works best about this particular project is that it gives students the framework necessary for growth as a teacher and instructional designer. This project seems as if it is meant to allow pre-service educators to gain pivotal experience while developing materials that can very well be used in a future classroom, if it fits that curriculum, that is. This project is a way for students who will one day become teachers to teach their own hypothetical students without ever having met them; its a way to teach without actually opening your mouth. Essentially, what works best about this project is that it sustains growth in young teachers and provides valuable experience that I am wholeheartedly convinced will payoff in the relatively near future. As an upperclassman and someone who is subsequently working through my methods courses here at Purdue, time was the greatest obstacle I had to overcome while developing this

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project. If I had more time, I feel that my information activities would be much more worthwhile to the hypothetical students who would actually use this activity. For instance, in the sake of time, much of my information activities are marred with text. Admittedly, I would feel some degree of trepidation with such text-heavy pages flashing before my eyes as well. More time would permit me to eradicate this problem by adding audio narrations over the slides of the project, or even break the information up over a larger number of pages. But we are all slaves to time, are we not? Even in the absence of greater time being allotted to the development of this project, I still feel as if I have developed an adequate instructional activity that I can display without regret. In all honesty, I hated the idea of the planning cards. In my busy schedule, they seemed to be a tedious bit of work that would not even prove to be helpful as I moved further along in the process of developing this project. I was astonished with how wrong I was. The planning cards were such an immense help during the construction of this project. They provided a solid foundation upon which to situate myself as I work through the tedium of developing slide after slide, transition after transition. If ever I felt my project was veering away from my learning objectives, all I needed to do was study the corresponding planning card and my feet simultaneously gained purchase on the uphill struggle that is the process of Project 3 construction. In contrast, the peer reviews were less helpful, as my peers did not seem so willing to into deep analysis of a project that was not their own. This is understandable, and I admit to doing the same with the project I reviewed. Still, I felt that portion to be relatively inconsequential in the progression of my project. First and foremost, I have learned that instructional development is a tiring, rigorous process at times, but one that must be endured for the sake of ones students. Sure, its hard, but

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what does it say about a teacher when they are blatantly unwilling to undergo a bit of sweat for the betterment of their students? I also learned that instructional planning can be as rewarding as a teacher growing in the profession as it can be for the students who are completing the planned instruction. As I was completing this project, I not only learned about the topic of my activity, I learned about myself as a learner and a teacher. What I mean by this is that I was able to consider if I as a student would be receptive to the material displayed in the manner I had constructed. I was also able to consider which avenues were the more worthwhile to explore in the presentation of my material as a teacher. All in all, it was a worthwhile experience on all fronts. EL.11.3 2006: Students read and respond to grade-level-appropriate socially or historically relevant texts. This is the standard on which I was primarily focusing throughout the extent of this project. I selected this standard because I believed it to be the one most central to my goal in developing this activity. Not only did I intend for students to gain a relatively comprehensive understanding of the texts involved in my activity, I sought for this projects future use to be as a pre-reading activity, so as to give students a solid framework and introductory understanding of potentially difficult texts before they try to read them for themselves.