What is productivity software? How can it be adapted to benefit teaching and learning?

In fact, the productivity software is used in the business and industry first, and later people found that it can help educators as well, so it was introduced into education area. This is a normal phenomenon, another example is that a lot of software were first designed for business or industry purpose, and were introduced to some other areas later on. So generally speaking, the office productivity software that has facilitated business operations can oftentimes be used to serve educators as well for their administrative and educational tasks. For the educators that teaching is not the only thing that they need to do, as it said on the book that much of their time is consumed in completing the many administrative tasks necessary to prepare and maintain an effective learning environment and to meet the record-keeping demands of the typical school system. This is the needs and also the reason that the productivity software was introduced into education area.
This kind of soft ware typically designed for ease of use and most of this kind of software programs have similar looks and feel, so that it is easy for the users to know other productivity software from the same vendor if they already knew how to use one of them. This is a good feature that benefits all the users, and it also benefits the software itself in the way that it can be spread wildly and quickly.
Commonly, the primary types of productivity software found in business environment include: word processors, electronic spreadsheets, database management systems, and presentation software. All these software programs were designed to be used for different purposes in business and industry offices. They can be purchased in individual packages or in application suites, and they were designed for running in PC or Macintosh platform. Nowadays a school system or school districts will often purchase a site license which allows the use of software package on all machines within an organization.
This kind of software can be used in all kinds of places in a school such as classrooms and faculty centers. Let take the word processors as an example, word-processing software is the most commonly used computer application. And it is doing a great job in everyday classroom teaching. The features that facilitate the creation of memos and tests can be creatively applied to teaching and learning. Teacher can use it to make calendars, publish class books of poetry, create newsletters, prepare flyers, make class stationery, and even author classroom website, etc.
Today’s teaching is evolved with technology and they are integral. I cannot imagine that how the educators do their job without the help of technology. The software such as word processors or electronic spreadsheets or any other software in education area is becoming more and more important now.
At the same time educators need to spend time getting familiar with these tools, even though they are easy to be learned. The myschool online offers a little program named Office tools and tips is a good material that introduces us some tools and tips about how to use them. It is worthwhile for us to watch it.

What is a virtual environment? What potential does it hold for education?

Virtual reality is a combination of hardware and soft ware that together create a digital environment with which learners can interact. As PC system capacity increases, more and more complex programs can be created, such as virtual reality. Using VR hardware you can see and interact with a 3D digital world. VR environment let learners take realistic virtual field trips using digital images of real places. Others are constructed from micro world at a molecular or atomic level or from images gathered from NASA space probs. These kinds of places already exit today. Such as users using a specific gloves that adjust the VR world to interactive with it.
Some places in the real world, students can not go to see or too small to be seen, but the VR environment can help. The computer can offer a digital environment which allows students to “see” in their own way, such as move the planets or go inside of a certain atom to research the layout. Anyway just like the real world. Another thing is some places are too dangerous to students to go and the lab can not create this environment either, but VR can. Let us say volcano. Some students may need to study on it and it is too dangerous for them to go there to see it, besides volcano does not exit everywhere. Then VR helps and it can mimic a real volcano environment and allow students to get familiar with it. These are just a little example of the function of VR. In fact the VR can do more than these, some VR software may include school or classroom tours, virtual field trips, creating a virtual museum, or playing specimens or exhibits that other students can manipulate.
The VR software holds a lot potential for education with the development of technology, especially with development of PC. It can broaden the angle of teaching and learning. In the past, students just can get the knowledge from the live instructors and can not see, so everything is based upon their imagination. Nowadays with the help of computer programs the students can not only see the models but also can listen if necessary. These are really helpful with improving the efficiency of learning and teaching. The instructors may need to spend a whole day to explain a certain chemical changing process to the students, but now just need ten minutes to show them a piece of video that offered by VR program.
So the VR will do more and more for education in the future. The only limitation of using VR, as the author said, is the limitation of human’s imagination.

Describe the role of the operating system. How does it help you interact with a computer?

When you power on a computer it first reads the instructions stored in ROM which tells the computer how to start itself up and begins to carry these instructions out. This is also called booting up, that is pulling oneself up by one’s own bootstraps. The computer will finish this step automatically and what all the users need to do is push the button to power it on.
Then here comes the operating system when you turn on your computer successfully. The operating system is a program which can interact with you. For example, you need to save data, or you need to open a document, or you want to delete a file, etc. Then what will you do? You probably will click a mouse button. And then the computer will delete that file or save that data or open that document for you “automatically”. Well, can the computer “automatically” do these things? Because there is a special program in the computer that can accomplish doing these according to your command (you click a save button that is your command to save something). This special command is called operating system. We can also understand this program by its name: operating system is a system that helps you to operate the computer.
The operating system should be convenient to use because operating system is a external software that interact with users. There are two most popular operating systems today from two different companies: windows from Microsoft Company and Macintosh OS from Apple Company.
Another thing needs to say is that there also other kinds of software in the computer. Like if you want to play a piece of music or want to play a video or want to type in a document like I am doing now, you may need another kind of software called application programs. During this process the operating system will offer users a platform through which the users can finish their jobs. Let us take an instance of typing a document with Microsoft word. If you want use the word to type a test you need to click the word button in the operating platform and the operating system will open the word for you. When you finish typing you click the save menu in the operating system and the operating system will save the file in the word format for you.
You can tell the operating system is like a general commander and the application software is like soldiers and you are like the president. Then if you may want to know where the officer is, like captain and here is the answer: since each piece of application software can only do a single task, some companies collect some popular application software and bundle them into a “suite”, like Microsoft office which includes word, excel, power point and some other software.

How can an instructional design model help you develop your instructional plan? Identify the steps of the DID model and briefly explain each.

Teachers should make plans for any courses they teach and this is very important for improving the teaching efficiency and effectiveness, according to my teaching experience. As you know, there will not be any two students who are same, or any two teachers. So deferent teachers may have different ways to achieve the goals and I think following a model is an easy choice, especially for the novices who just begin to teach. The process of instructional designing is very complex and it won’t be easy for any teachers to take all the aspects of the teaching into their considerations. So following an instructional design model can help teachers make plans step by step. Also the models from many books are the summarization of many teachers’ experiences which are already proved to be effective. When I was a teacher, some teaching models helped me a lot with my planning for the courses I taught.
The DID model that the author talked about in this chapter includes six steps:
Step1: know the learners. This is the first step of this model and also an important step, I think. Because not having an understanding of different learning styles may negatively impact the effectiveness of your teaching. Knowing the learners’ needs, their learning styles and their background related to the course you are going to teach is the beginning of DID model.
Step2: state the objective. What goal will be achieved as a result of the instruction you are designing? That is what you want the students to learn after completing the course you designed. What they are supposed to do or to know after taking this class.
Step3: establish the learning environment. We know that a learning environment includes all the conditions, circumstances, and influences that affect the students’ learning. So I think any components in the process of teaching or learning should be included and considered by the designers.
Step4: identify teaching and learning strategies. The educator already know who are the learners from step1, what he or she will teach from step 2 and in what kind of environment he or she will be teaching from step 3, so now it is the time for them to think about what strategies should she or he employs to achieve the goal. That means the teacher should decide what method should be used to assist students in achieving the objective.
Step5: identify and select technologies. This is the step to choose what tools you need to use to enhance and support Step 4. Considering that different technologies have different use, advantages and disadvantages and also the strategies that you are going to use is necessary before choosing the appropriate technologies to achieve your objective.
Step6: summative evaluation and revision plan. No design is flawless, revision based on summative evaluation is needed. Maximizing the good qualities through the revision will help us make progress.
Above is my experience of using models to help with my teaching and the steps of DID model that the author discussed in this chapter. What I want to say is always first considering situations you have and then decide what model you need. Even when you are following a model you still can make some changes according to the situations you are in. Taking everything in books is worse than not reading any books. I mean the most important thing is to analyze your unique situations before employing models in books.

My understanding on educational technology and its relationship with teaching and learning process.

I did not realize that it is so complex in this area before I read through this chapter. I thought that this field focuses only on how to use technology in education. Now I understand what I thought before is too narrow to capture the characteristics of this area.
The author said in this chapter that the definition of educational technology is always changing because this field is in a state of rapid change which is under the influences of the Information Age. I found that both the education and technology changed during the last century after I read through the history part of this chapter. So I think it is hard to say that the way we teach facilitates the technology or the technology which we employed (in education) facilitates the way we teach. They are integral and facilitating each other and moving forward together. Also with the development of education and technology they are becoming closer and closer. Still from the history of this field I can tell educational technology is always on the way of pursuing the purpose of improving the efficiency of human learning. This never changed during the past years and will not change in the future either.
As the author discussed in this chapter learning styles are different from person to person. Through the analysis of all kinds of learners and teachers and learning styles, people believe that the ways of teaching should vary too. Then how to realize this? As the author said Technology can help with this and also it can help educators to improve the efficiency of teaching. I understand when the author say that Lecture and oral presentation, when used along, can be a challenging for many students. In fact it was a challenge for when I was in my high school. Plus that the intelligences are different from person to person as explored in the video of Multiple Intelligences. This also asks educators to offer different ways of teaching. The other video gives us good ideas of Strategies for Teaching Diverse Learners. Now Educational technologies become the tools that a teacher might use to create an effective instructional event. That is why this area is so important to education.
Educational Technology is becoming widespread and is accepted by more and more people. Many people benefit from it and learning is becoming more and more convenient.