EDDL 5131

As I was thinking about this activity my mind instantly went to the storytelling tools my students use every day, Snapchat and Instagram.  At the middle and high school and even upper elementary, I think using these tools as an educational storytelling platform would be an excellent way to engage students.  So I started googling.  I came across a couple of links to ways you can use both platforms in the classroom:

• https://teach.com/blog/six-snapchat-projects-for-a-classroom/
• https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Back-to-School-Snapchat-Summer-Story-Project-1404345
• https://www.commonsense.org/education/lesson-plans/using-instagram-for-narrative-writing

When looking for resources, I also found this great website which gives a list of various digital storytelling tools.  As a teacher, I can definitely see great applications for many of them in my classroom but for me, I’m more excited to use them as a parent.  My daughter is not a huge fan of writing, so finding fun ways to share her ideas and create engaging stories is something I spend a lot of time doing.

For my digital storytelling assignment, I chose to use the online comic creator www.pixton.com.  The story is pretty simple but it could be a used as a starting point for a class discussion in regards to the future of space exploration as part of Science 9.

Scroll to the left to view.

https://Pixton.com/ic:vvyxx6m9

I combined the audio activities into one audio file.  I first recorded a script I created using Audacity.  I then downloaded an audio file from freesound.org (here) and clipped it to a shorter length.  I then combined the 2 files by appending the freesound audio file to the end of my scripted audio.  Lastly, I added another piece of scripted text after the freesound audio clip.

Hi, everyone. My name is Jose Pascua and I am a husband, a father of two, and a Grade 7 teacher at Our Lady of Perpetual Help School in Vancouver, British Columbia. I have been an elementary school teacher for thirteen years. However,  I’m at a point in my teaching career where I would like to explore the secondary school environment.

Teaching has been good to me, and it’s been quite rewarding. I’m originally from Los Angeles, California. I began my teaching career in Palmdale, California. It’s taken me to the South Bronx in New York City for a couple of years, and it currently has me in Vancouver, British Columbia. (Long story short – my wife is Canadian and we’ve always agreed to settle in Vancouver when we had children.)  It’s been a fun and exciting ride through and through.

I have learned, that as a teacher, you can never stop learning. Hence, I’m always trying to pick up new things as I go. I hope to share, learn, and possibly steal some really good ideas with my participation in this course.

I look forward to learning with all of you.

Best,

Jose

I chose to turn a great picture of the High School I work at into a thumbnail using Preview.

I have a created the following layered graphic in Adobe Photoshop.

Each portion of the life cycle is a different layer and it progresses as follows:

The steps I used in creating my layered graphic:

1. I found individual images of a star at all the different points in its lifecycle using Google Image Search with the license settings set to Labeled for Reuse with Modification.
2. I then cropped all of the images into a circular shape using the Smart Lasso Tool in Preview.
3. I created a background layer using the stars in the night sky and grouped it with the title.
4. For each individual portion of the star’s lifecycle, I grouped together the layers containing the image, the text, and the arrow.

I could use this image in my grade 9 science class by opening up the Photoshop document and bring up one layer at a time until the whole lifecycle was displayed.  Another option would be to put all the png files for all 6 layers into a slideshow and then click through them one at a time.

Graphic #1:

Graphic #1 is a transformational graphic.  According to Richard Mayar, “A common use of transformational visuals is to teach or provide reference to the steps needed to perform a procedural task” (19).  In this graphic, the specific steps necessary to solve a linear equation problem are outlined in blue and the problem itself is solved step by step.  This graphic aligns with the Alberta Grade 9 Math curriculum and I would either use it as an anchor graphic in my classroom, put on my class website, include it in a review package or text it to the students as a homework resource. This graphic meets all the guiding principles outlined by Mayar in that it provides a functional role both in and out of the classroom and it fits well into the context of the math 9 classroom (22-25).  When creating the graphic I ensured I used a variety of actions and tools such as; using contrasting colours, aligning information, and using a variety of shapes. 

Graphic #2 is a relational graphics.  According to Mayar, “relational visuals are used to communicate quantitative relationships among two or more variables” (19).  The above bar graph that I created uses contrasting colours, shape and information chunking as some of its actions/tools.  This graphic meets the guiding principles in that it would work well in the context of an electricity lesson in a grade 9 science class, based on the Alberta curriculum.  It is also very functional in that it not only relays information to the students it also opens up an avenue for discussion.  For example, the teacher could ask students to hypothesize why there is no data for 6V (yellow) and 9V (green) when the resistance is 5Ω. 

References:

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.

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

Keith Webster. Graphics for Learning
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5yd_M2xe78

Being that I am currently teaching the Matter and Chemical Change Unit in my Science 9 class I decided to use the following picture of a Periodic Table which I downloaded from Wikimedia Commons (here).

My school district has an Adobe Enterprise account and I have really been wanting to work with Adobe Photoshop so I chose to use this platform to crop my photo.

I cropped out the following portions of the original periodic table:

• The group and period labels.
• The individual element key.
• The names of the different families/groups.
• The electron configuration blocks key.
• The inner transition elements.

This cropped version of the periodic table could be used in a summative assessment task. Not only does it exclude many elements not discussed in Grade 9 Science, it also no longer contains key information that would provide answers in a summative assessment task.