EDDL 5131

EDDL 5131 – Media Exemplar Collection – Everyday Things

PICTURE/GRAPHIC: Google Photos; Snapseed

Ex.) Six-Word Memoir Graphic

With my particular group of students, Grade Seven, I thought the use of the smartphone would serve a dual purpose. It would activate engagement because of the familiarity and appeal their phones would bring to any task. Secondly, the various apps could be utilized to facilitate the learning process.

In working with six-word memoirs this year, I thought that several activities using multimedia elements would help provide a more engaging approach for each student to meet the learning objective. I designed these exemplars around a six-word memoir unit based on everyday things in our lives.

For my picture/graphic, I used my iPhone 6 camera with the following apps:

• Google Photos
• Snapseed

Google Photos allowed access to unlimited storage of my photos from my phone’s camera roll. In addition, Snapseed is an application that links directly to Google Photos and provides various mobile editing features such as adding text, filters, and effects. (see below)

 AUDIO: Six-Word Memoir Recording: Audacity

In terms of creating an audio file, I wanted students to have an opportunity to tell their story by recording a familiar sound in their everyday lives. Students would write a six-word memoir about that particular sound. They would then use Audacity to record the audio of themselves reading their memoir. In addition, they would use Audacity to record the actual sound.

Six-Word Memoir recording: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1KNCx4e-xdBiiY0POzWQ2qBXfztIE51qJ/view?usp=sharing

VIDEO: Screencastify Lite; YouTube; Google Drive

Ex.) Record a video based upon three six-word memoirs

As a final task or summative assessment for my six-word memoir unit, I thought it would be fun to incorporate all three multimedia elements of picture, audio, and video into a Screencastify video clip.

The following clip is an example of three six-word memoirs about everyday things in my life.

Six-Word Memoir Video: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1L4NsC5ba3lcoB7rCA-y5azzqdfAcBgm2/view?usp=sharing

Six-Word Memoir: Mystery Character

Objective: In a small group (3 to 4 students), each student will write a six-word memoir about a popular fictional character and produce a Google Slides ”Guess the Character” presentation to reveal the mystery character.

Materials: Chromebooks or laptops, Google Slides application, Screencastify program, Google Docs, Google Classroom, *earbuds or headphones equipped with a microphone, Google Drive

INTRO.

The teacher will begin the lesson with a quick review of the characteristics of a six-word memoir. Next, the teacher will ask the students to form a small group of three to four students.

The teacher will ask each group to select a popular fictional character from television or film. The teacher may provide a list of acceptable characters.

Each group will be given three minutes to select a character. The teacher will prompt the class to not share the identity of their group’s character. Using one student Chromebook, the character’s name will be emailed to the teacher.

THROUGH:

At this point, the teacher will ask each group member to write a six-word memoir about their group’s character. The teacher will also remind students that they may write about their character from various perspectives. Such as:

• The character’s point of view
• Another character’s view of the character
• The student’s personal point of view about the character

The class will be given ten minutes to write their six-word memoirs.

Once the class has written their mystery character six-word memoirs, they will be asked to create a shared Google Slides presentation to help reveal their character to the class.

In addition, each group will use Screencastify to record each student reading his or her six-word memoir about their mystery character.

Each Google Slides presentation should contain the following:

• Each slide on their Google Slides presentation will represent each group member’s six-word memoir about the mystery character.
• The final slide should display an image of the group’s mystery character.

Upon completion of the Google Slides presentation, each group will be asked to Screencastify a recording of each member’s six-word memoir. The Screencastify recording of the Google Slides presentation should be saved to each student’s Google Drive.

The teacher will create an assignment via Google Classroom for each group to submit their final presentation clip.

Once all presentation clips are submitted, the class will view the clips in an attempt to guess the each group’s mystery character based on the six-word memoirs provided. The teacher will pause each clip prior to the final slide revealing the group’s mystery character.

BEYOND:

Once all presentation clips are presented, the teacher will wrap up the activity with a discussion about how storytelling can be a powerful form of communication, even if only consisting of six-words. Student feedback will be acquired through a Question task in Google Classroom.

Resource Links:

Google Slides tutorial https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYpGoN6Pj5c

Screencastify tutorial https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YApKqhQS-yA

Google Docs tutorial https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBITNezSmLY

Google Classroom basic tutorial https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVJHM5V7l2M

Six-Word Memoir Lesson

For this multimedia enhanced lesson, I incorporated the following programs and applications to create my online lesson on how to write a Six-Word Memoir.

• Google Sites
• Google Slides
• Screencastify Lite
• Photos (IOS)
• Google Photos
• Snapseed
• Voice Memo (iPhone)

As a Grade Seven teacher, writing is an area that I like to focus on. It’s very important to find new ideas or ways to develop a love for writing. With that in mind and with our new generation of the smartphone student, I thought it would be fun to incorporate writing with some familiar technology. The Six-Word Memoir is a form of storytelling, and definitely caters to the saying of less is more.  

This particular lesson allows the student to utilize media in either a visual or auditory fashion. Using photography and mobile editing allows the writing to be captured in a visual format very common to the student. With various social media platforms such as Instagram or Snapchat, the marrying of text and visuals is a common feature for sharing.

The audio recording component allows the student to have the option of recording their Six-Word Memoir. This definitely helps the student who prefers to talk or learns more so from talking. This avenue also allows the student who is disinterested in writing to meet the learning objectives of the lesson without the physical writing.

With the engagement provided through the use of media, my hopes are to have my Grade Seven students find a unique way to write stories and to extend their interest in story writing.

My lesson is pedagogically sound due to the incorporation of the digital storytelling components found within Jason Ohler’s storytelling and new media narrative. It took some time to plan this lesson, being that my daily forum for teaching has me providing direct instruction in front of my classroom. I found this resource to be helpful, especially with the rehearsal of my Screencastify instructional clip. I must’ve tried at least ten takes before I found one to my liking.

I was happy with this lesson but I always feel that certain parts could’ve improved. Maybe I should’ve done one more take? Maybe I should’ve produced a “how to” clip on how to produce a voice recording with a smartphone?

I’ve learned that after the delivery of a lesson, subtle changes that upgrade the effectiveness of your lesson must be considered and often implemented.

Scroll left and right in the embedded Padlet below to view my Media Exemplar Collection
or go to https://padlet.com/ae2056/5ik0xj2u71tt

Graphic:
To create the graphic I used layers in Photoshop.  I then saved each layer as a JPG file.  I uploaded the JPG files to http://gifmaker.me/. After setting the animation speed to the desired rate I chose “Create GIF Animation” and then downloaded my GIF.  The one downfall of a GIF is that you can’t pause, fast-forward, or rewind the animation as necessary.  To combat this, I chose to also download the GIF as a video file which allows the user to pause, fast-forward, and rewind the animation.

Graphic as a GIF – HERE
Graphic as a Video – HERE

Audio:
I decided that I needed a graphic to go along with my audio piece so I created one using Google Drawings.  For the audio, I created a script and then recorded and edited the piece using Audacity.  In order to embed the audio into my Google Sites page, I needed to add a gadget which I found at http://www.dalebasler.com/2014/06/embed-an-html5-audio-player-in-google-sites/.  I really liked this gadget as it allows the user to fast-forward, rewind and pause the audio clip when in Google Chrome or Firefox (not in Safari).  I also decided to add my audio to a screen-capture of an animated version of the image I created.  I animated the image using Google Slides, used Quicktime for screen-capture, and lastly used iMovie to splice and edit everything together.

Audio with Graphic – HERE
Audio with Screen-Capture – HERE

Video:
For my video, I used the video I created week 10 as my starting point.  This video took about 5-6 hours total time to create as it is made up live video recording, screen-capture recordings and animated graphics that were either modified from an existing source or created from scratch.  To make the video more interactive with the viewer I decided to embed some reflective questions into the video.  Using the website www.playposit.com I added multiple choice, checkbox, and short answer questions to the video.  I purposely set the video so students cannot fast forward this is to ensure that they cannot just skip ahead to questions without watching the content.  Students are however able to rewind to review content.  This would be a great formative activity to use in my classroom as PlayPosit collects the responses for me to review.

Original Video – HERE
Formative Assessment Verison of Video – HERE

The Debate Between Renewable & Non-Renewable Resources Performance-Based Assessment Task

In groups of two, complete the following Electrical Principles and Technologies assignment: HERE (Google Sign In Required)

Creating a Multimedia Enhanced Student Activity

I have included an embedded version of the Google Slides presentation that I would give my students in case you do not have a Google account.  There are 3 different ways I could assign this document:

1. I would probably assign this project to Google Classroom and choose the “make a copy for each student” when assigning. Students when then turn in this file through Google Classroom when done.
2. If I was teaching in a non-Google Classroom setting, however students still had an a Google account, I would share the document in the same way I did above which forces students to make their own copy of the document so they do not have access to the original (in the sharing link change the word edit to copy).  Students would then share their completed slideshow using Google sharing settings.
3. If I was not working in a Google Environment, I would probably use either a tool such as Emaze or Prezi instead of Google Slides.  I would set those documents in the same was Google Slides but the instruct students to make their own copy of the template, complete it with the required information, and then email me the link to their completed project.

When publishing a Google Slide Show it allows you to choose how fast the slides progress if you use the play button on the slides I have set it to advance every minute, if you would like to move at your own pace I would suggest using the arrows instead.

There are 3 different ways I could assign this lesson:

1. In my classroom, I would assign this project to Google Classroom and choose the “make a copy for each student” when assigning. Students when then turn in this file through Google Classroom when done.
2. If I was teaching in a non-Google Classroom setting, but students still had a Google account, I would share the document in the same way I did above.  This method forces students to make their own copy of the document so they do not have access to the original (in the sharing link change the word edit to copy).  Students would then share their completed slideshow using Google sharing settings.
3. If I was not working in a Google Environment, I would probably use either a tool such as Emaze or Prezi instead of Google Slides.  I would set those documents up in the same way I set up the Google Slideshow but then instruct students to make their own copy of the template, complete it with the required information, and then email me the link to their completed project.

This lesson falls into the Alberta Science 9 Electrical Principles and Technologies Curriculum and it meets the following objectives:

General Outcome: Describe and discuss the societal and environmental implications of the use of electrical energy.
Specific Outcomes:
-Identify and evaluate sources of electrical energy, including oil, gas, coal, biomass, wind and solar.
-Describe the by-products of electrical generation and their impacts on the environment.
-Identify concerns regarding conservation of energy resources, and evaluate means for improving the sustainability of energy use.

General Outcome: Work collaboratively on problems and use appropriate language and formats to communicate ideas, procedures, and results.
Specific Outcomes:
-Receive, understand and act on the ideas of others.
-Work cooperatively with team members to develop and carry out a plan, and troubleshoot problems as they arise.
-Defend a given position on an issue or problem, based on their findings.

Up to this point, the pedagogy that we have been addressing surrounds the appropriate use of multimedia in relation to the teacher using it within their delivery.  This assignment instead focusses on having students create a piece of multimedia therefore, the pedagogy needs to address the benefits students incur by producing multimedia.

According to Mayer (1996) meaningful learning occurs when the learner engages in appropriate selecting, organizing, and integrating during learning. In this lesson, when creating both the infographics and the debate students would be required to filter through and evaluate a variety of information about the various types of energy sources.  Students would then need to organize this information based on the two energy sources they chose.  Lastly, they would need to integrate what they have learned into two clear and concise graphics as well as a script for their debate.

Further investigation into the benefits of having students create multimedia led me to the United Nations document “The Futures of Learning 3: What Kind of Pedagogies for the 21st Century?”  Within this document, the author, Cynthia Luna Scott (2015), “explores pedagogies and learning environments that may contribute to the development and mastery of twenty-first-century competencies and skills, and advance the quality of learning” (p.2.).

While reading through the document there were a number of references that Scott made based on the material of other scholars that really spoke to me.  The first was by Barron and Darling-Hammond (as cited in Scott 2015) in which they stated that “deeper learning takes place when learners can apply classroom-gathered knowledge to real-world problems and take part in projects that require sustained engagement and collaboration” (p. 6).  That is to say, that when students are given the opportunity to create unique products based on knowledge and skill outcomes they are more likely to retain the information as well as well as take ownership of the learning process.

The second came from McLoughlin and Lee (as cited in Scott 2015) who argue “the ultimate goal of learning is to stimulate learners’ capacities to create and generate ideas, concepts, and knowledge” (p. 7).  Twenty-first-century tools allow students the ultimate freedom when creating and generating their own ideas.  Producing media such as graphics or video give students an opportunity to take a metacognitive approach to their learning.  In order to produce such materials, students need to reflect on what they already know and also recognize what they do not understand.  Students then further their understanding by doing added research or collaborating with their peers or teachers.

Lastly, the key to having students create multimedia pieces is understanding what to assess.  Marc Prensky (as cited in Scott 2015) states, ‘it is not the tools themselves that we need to focus on, but rather the products, creativity, and skills that the tools enable and enhance’ (p. 9).  Our focus when it comes to assessment still needs to be the outcomes addressed in the curriculum.  However, as responsible teachers, it is our job to “create regular opportunities for learners to select the types of experiences they want to further their own learning. This cultivates greater learner autonomy and inspires individuals to take control of their learning” (Hampson, Patton and Shanks, as cited in Scott 2015, p. 4).

Citations

Mayer, R. (1996). Learning Strategies for Making Sense out of Expository Text: The SOI Model for Guiding Three Cognitive Processes in Knowledge Construction. Educational Psychology Review, 8(4), 357-371. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/23359444

Cynthia Luna Scott. THE FUTURES of LEARNING 3: What kind of pedagogies for the 21st century?  UNESCO Education Research and Foresight, Paris. [ERF Working Papers Series, No. 15].

As a teacher, I believe sharing material is the backbone of our profession.  We have big jobs and if we couldn’t rely on our colleagues to share resources with us they would be even bigger.  That being said, I believe it is important to give credit where credit is due.  For myself, if I find an educational resource online I try to get in touch with the teacher to see if they are open to sharing.  If the item comes from a more public domain, I try to add the source information for where I found the item.

I currently share resources in a number of ways; Google Drive, Dropbox, SugarSync, Google Sites, Blogger, YouTube and now WordPress.  For all of my resources, I am completely open to other teachers, parents, or students using or remixing my materials.  If I put my resources in a public forum such as Google Sites or Blogger it is material that I offer up to the public domain.  For other resources that I want to be more selective in regards to who I share it with I instead use more private online storage.  With Google Drive, Dropbox and SugarSync I am able to share specific items with specific people with just a shareable link.

Lastly, as I move forward in my teaching career the one thing that I am finding myself doing more and more is being increasingly cognizant of citing references.  Often as teachers, we find videos, images, etc. online and throw them into a Powerpoint or copy them into an activity.  In the past, these resources would remain in a classroom setting and would not violate most copyright laws.  Now that I am putting more and more of my material online I am trying to take the time to cite material properly to not only give credit where credit is due but also to set a good example for my students.

For this video, I once again addressed the learning outcome:

“Distinguish between ionic and molecular compounds, and describe the properties of some common examples of each.”

I decided to combine the videos I created in activity 1 with some screencasting to make a more in-depth version of my original video on ionic compounds.

My first step was setting up screen captures.  The first I made used a gif file so there was no animation required on my part. For the remaining 4, I decided to animate them on my own using Google Slides.  For each video, I started with the image and text I wanted the animation to look like at the end.  I then added white boxes over the elements that I did not want showing at the beginning of the animation.  I applied animation actions to each of the boxes so that they disappeared when I clicked my mouse or a keyboard key.

Once I had the animations set up I used Quicktime to make a screen recording of each slide as I clicked through the animations.  I made sure the microphone was turned off when doing the recordings as I already intended to use voice over in iMovie for the sound.  The key here was to make sure I screen recorded when Google Slides was in Present mode, otherwise when I spliced it into iMovie parts of the video were cropped out.  Once the screen capture was complete I used the trim tool in Quicktime to clean up the beginnings and endings.

Now that I had all of my videos ready to go I spliced them together in iMovie and then used the voice over tool to add my script.  I found it best to record small amounts of the script at a time as I made fewer errors that way.

Overall this week, I spent a good amount of time creating this video and there were quite of few lessons learned.  That being said, now that I am getting more familiar with iMovie, as well as getting pretty adept at creating my own animated screen recordings, I can see myself making more of these types of videos in the future to share with my students.

This week I chose to focus on the topic of Ionic Compounds.  Specifically, I addressed the following outcome from the Alberta Grade 9 Science Program of Studies:

“Distinguish between ionic and molecular compounds, and describe the properties of some common examples of each.”

I was inspired this week by one of my students who created a whiteboard video using an actual whiteboard and a marker – imagine that, no fancy website required.

So I got out my whiteboard and marker, set up my iPhone on a tripod, and got started.  It wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be.  First off, trying to set up the area of the whiteboard that my phone was videoing provided a challenge.  I kept writing past the frame being recorded.  Once I sorted that out, I needed to actually practice writing neatly.  In today’s computer age I find I write less and less by hand and my handwriting has definitely suffered.  My last, and probably the most time-consuming challenge was dealing with hitting the storage limit on my iPhone.  After each video, I had to upload it to the cloud and then delete it from my phone before starting the next one, 21st-century problems.

Once I had my 5 mini whiteboard videos made I opened iMovie on my computer.  I haven’t used iMovie for over 5 years so the platform has changed a bit.  It took some fiddling around but I created a title slide and added my 5 videos back to back.  Once this was done I muted the volume and customized the video speed to 500% for each clip.  Lastly, I created a voiceover of the information being shared in the whiteboard videos.

In the end, it took about an hour to create this 1 min whiteboard video.  It’s pretty basic, so my plan is to edit and add specific content as well as some graphics to it for activity 3 this week.

I created the above lesson on Solving and Graphing Linear Inequalities based on the Alberta Grade 9 Curriculum.  The specific outcome is “Explain and illustrate strategies to solve single variable linear inequalities with rational coefficients within a problem-solving context.”  I have actually decided to add this lesson to my Math Google Classroom for students to use as a review activity.

When putting together this lesson I tried to keep a couple of key things in mind from the readings. Specifically, using a sans-serif font, appropriate font size and a high contrast between font and background (Webster, 2014.) I also believe in both the Work Out Example Principle as well as the Animation Principle as mentioned by Randi Gill (2009) in her presentation; “Learning Design for the Brain – Multimedia Principles.”  This led me to create the four following types of multimedia;

1. Static Images
2. Animated GIF
3. Video Screen Capture
4. Video Screen Capture with Audio

Static Images

I created two different static images in my lesson.  Both of these images are based on the “Representational Communication Function” as described by Clark and Lyons (2010).  The goal of both of these graphics was to represent information students either needed to know (inequality signs on slide 2) or do something with (practice questions on slide 7).

Animated GIF

According to Clark and Lyons (2010, p. 19) “Transformational visuals communicate changes over time or over space.”  The GIF I created on slide 4 used 5 separate images which I created in Photoshop and then combined together to make a GIF in gifmaker.me.  The GIF goes step by step through the process of solving a specific inequality.  I could have left the image static, however, I feel by animating it, it helps novice learners chunk the information into useful segments and form a coherent mental model (Gill, 2009).

Video Screen Capture

The two video captures I did on slides 5 and 6 were both made using Quicktime and animations on Powerpoint.   These videos were an effective means of sharing both the rules and examples of graphing and solving linear inequalities.  The first one organizes the information by combining both the rules and the examples in a chart.  The second, like the GIF, chunks the process for solving the inequality into useful segments allowing for students to see the rule in action.

Video Screen Capture with Audio

The final multimedia item I created, which is located on slide 8, takes into account Mayer’s (2014) Cognitive Theory which asserts that people learn more from words and pictures than words alone.  By creating a screen capture of the process involved in solving and graphing specific linear equations students get the visual of the process.  By explaining the process as I go through the steps, auditory learners are able to follow along.  This fits well into the Dual Coding Theory originally proposed by Pavio in 1971.  “The chances that a memory will be retained and retrieved are much greater if it is stored in two distinct functional locations rather than in just one” (Thomas, 2014).

Overall, this lesson is pedagogically sound as it meets the specific learner expectation by combining a variety of research supported forms of multimedia.  It also addresses a variety of learning styles and allows the learner to interact with the lesson in a way that is meaningful to them.

References

Webster, K.S. (2014). Text Design for Online Learning. Retrieved from
http://courses.olblogs.tru.ca/eddl5131-jan17/week-2-text/text-design-for-online-learning/

Gill, R.  2009. 11. Learning Design for the Brain – Multimedia Principles. Retrieved from  https://www.slideshare.net/ranihgill/learning-design-for-the-brain-multimedia-principles

Clark, R.C & Lyons, C. (2010). Three views of instructional visuals, In Graphics for Learning: Proven Guidelines for Planning, Designing and Evaluating Visuals in Training Materials. San Francisco: Pfeiffer, 15-28.  Retrieved from
http://site.ebrary.com.ezproxy.tru.ca/lib/trulibrary/reader.action?docID=10469757&ppg=37

Mayer, R.E. (2014). Research Based Principles for Multimedia Learning.
Presentation given at Harvard University, 5 May 2014.  Retrieved from
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJ3wSf-ccXo

Thomas, N.J.T. (2014). Dual Coding and the Common Coding Theories of Memory. Retrieved from http://socialmediatoday.com

So I wasn’t sure if we had a specific topic we needed to post about this week, however, assessing multimedia is a topic I often debate with my colleagues.  I enjoy technology and encourage my students to use it.  I often have been working toward getting them to use more multimedia tools in the classroom and as a way for them to share their knowledge with me.  The debate with colleagues, however, becomes what are you assessing?  Are you assessing the content of the multimedia or the development of the multimedia?  For myself, when I create a project I try really hard to hammer out what specific outcomes I need them to meet from the curriculum.  I then break them into summative vs formative tasks.  The summative portion of their mark usually aligns with the knowledge objectives from the curriculum and the formative portion usually address the actual process of developing the multimedia.

This really became clear to me last year when my colleagues and I created a project called Becoming a Chemistry Movie Star.  The students needed to create short videos which addressed 8 specific topics.  Some of these kids took it to the next level, they used props, added music, and used editing software.  Other students basically just used their cell phone to make a quick, and pretty drab, video.  The trick as a teacher was focussing on the content rather than the “pretty”.

Here are two examples:

From a multimedia perspective, the first video is much better.  However, both videos scored 100% on the summative portion of the assessment because they both included all of the necessary knowledge outcomes.  So like Keith said in his post for week 8;  “You need to assess and evaluate based on the criteria and outcomes for learning, and not the coolness of the technology, unless you are teaching a course on the use of multimedia tools or there is some kind of cross-curriculum technology component to the project.”

Reference:

Webster, K.S. (2014).  Week 8: Assessing Multimedia Projects from http://courses.olblogs.tru.ca/eddl5131-jan18/week-8-assessing-multimedia-projects/