R/D6

I understand the concept of Human Performance Improvement even though I was pretty confused by some of the material in Chapter 14.

Thinking back to Chapter 3, there was a section that focused on the development of training programs for the military (pg. 24). In this section, it discussed military training programs that were developed by psychologists and educators. The developers designed a screening test to examine different skills of military candidates. Depending on how the candidates tested, they would be directed into programs according to the skills they possessed. (This reminds me of career aptitude tests that high school students take to help them determine what careers they would be good at and enjoy.) By screening candidates first, the testers were able to put them in a program where they could excel. To me, Human Performance Improvement is basically just trying to design a way to get the most out of people.

Oftentimes in education or business, people do not perform to the standards that you think they should. You can encourage them and try to teach them more effectively, but it could be that the problem is not due to a lack of understanding or teaching.

For example, last year I gave what I thought was a simple rhythm test. I expected my first graders to be able to identify, draw, say and count three different beats. We took a pretest as a class and my objectives seemed very reasonable, maybe even a little too easy. When I handed out the tests I had designed, I had many confused students. After collecting and grading the tests, I found the majority of students appeared to be lost. After re-testing them individually, I realized that they had failed the test not because they didn’t understand that material, but because the test I gave was too confusing.

With the same theory in mind, sometimes the reason that so many teachers are unable to use their SMARTboards effectively is not because they weren’t taught well, but because they haven’t had time to incorporate the new technology into their teaching. In this case, in order to get teachers to use the SMARTboards, lesson plans incorporating the new tools could be presented to the teachers. This would take the pressure to plan something new off the teacher and would allow them to focus solely on using the SMARTboard.

Human Performance Improvement is a useful idea in education because we are looking for ‘performance’ from our students. We need to examine the methods we use to teach and evaluate student learning and make sure we “achieve… increasingly successful accomplishments…” as teachers.
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I’m not sure how to profile the Children’s Music Workshop podcast I have subscribed to. As I summarized in my post, this video podcast is geared towards children and showcases different kinds of musical experiences, including interviews, performances and rehearsals.

I think podcasting is a great tool to use in an educational setting. There are many things that cannot be learned through reading or seeing, especially in music. My students often come up with similar questions when we talk about describing tone color or what emotions different songs convey; it is difficult to explain in words what you hear. Podcasts would allow us to hear and share sounds and feelings when speaking or writing about them might be inadequate.
-Suzy