Assessment 1 Embedded Task 2

Infographics.

The week four topic is entitled ‘Digital Tools 2 – Digital Media’ and covers images, audio and video as media for learning.  These areas can also be divided into 1. Products that are already developed and presented and 2. Learner-centred or learner created products.

In my work life I have created digital images, created podcasts and uploaded them to my own iTunes channel and created videos both with moving video and with slides, music and words and I have uploaded them to a YouTube channel.  However, I have never tried to create an infographic before.  So, for this week, I have chosen my stretch goal to be creating an infographic.  I have found some great examples of infographics on the ACARA website.

I really enjoyed the blog post by ResourceLink which gives some really interesting background to the rationale for using infographics. 

Firstly, the availability of information is exploding, which is fueled by the Internet.  With such large amounts of information available, society needs better ways of communicating information.  I am also reflecting that the generation of students that we are teaching are given so much choice with their media that they have an interest in short presentations.  Youtube and the Internet allow our students to click away really quickly if what they are watching does not engage them quickly. I think infographics are engaging.

Secondly, as the Resource Link blog post points out, the Melbourne Declaration requires that in order for students to be successful, confident and creative individuals and active informed citizens, they must be able to comprehend interpret and extrapolate information is a wide variety of formats.  An infographic would be one such format.

Thirdly, the Resource Link blog suggests that 60% of learners are visual.  Most sources seem to agree with estimates of between 60 and 65% of learners being visual.  It seems that infographics will be a very useful in visually capturing information to support visual learners - who happen to be more than half the class.  

 

Finally, infographics are used by students to direct their differing views toward rather than at each other.  So infographics seem like a really useful tool in prompting critical thinking or deeper thinking (Blooms Taxonomy) and making a safe environment for students to share differing perspectives.

The Resource Link outlines three main ways that Infographics can be used:  as a source of information, as a tool to teach visual and critical literacy, as a way for students to express data.

I found that some interpretations of infographics are very wide.  For example, the flickr site Class Room Infographics  has examples of images that provide data only on one level.  There are also examples of essentially electronic posters about history topics in this group.  If we are looking at the SAMR model, the presentation of a bar graph on a city wall published as an image or an image of a poster about Mark Zukerberg, fits with substitution as this is an example of the tool being used as previously an excel chart or an A1 poster chart would be used.  This step is an important step in utilisation of the technology and hopefully teachers will progress on to more transformative uses of the technology as the SAMR model suggests.

I really liked this teacher created Blog onusing Infographics to tell a story from data (a skill that is fast becoming a must have skill for our era.)   I loved how this author used research done by San Francisco State University on designing infographics.  As an aside, in the picture of this blog, students are standing in a technology classroom taking photos of something at the front of the room.  When I studied my undergrad in the early 90s, we didn’t even have a mobile phones, let alone smart phones and so we all took hand written notes.  After I graduated and worked in tertiary teaching, we provided power point notes and I remember the uproar when the lecturers were asked to upload their power point notes for the students to download.  (Some lecturers resisted and provided paper print outs of the slides outside their door).  Around 2010 the students began to take photos of notes on the board and videos of lectures.

Here’s the top 10 tips for designing infographics  

The main aspect of an infographic for me is that the visual gives a really good overview of the data, but that the user can at find the source of the data on the infographic or, more ideally, they can drill down to the data using the infographic.

Spyrestudios demonstrate another ‘style’ of infographic which illustrates choices and uses images and colour coding both for encoding and for visual effect.  This type of infographic reminds me of a ‘Prezi’ presentation which uses type of concept map type to make the presentation that acts like a network structure rather than a procedural structure as can be seen in power point presentations.  I have created Prezi’s before, unfortunately never got to use them as management were expecting a power point presentation and the risks involved with a Prezi are both technical and conceptual. 

There are many tools that can be used to create infographics.  I found a good list of tools here 

I found this really interesting class lesson using an infographic to create instructions to do something.

After looking through lots of information about different tools, I tried easel.ly as recommended by the course materials.   

One of the benefits of using Easel.ly is the templates and themes because these make it easy to get a more professional look with a pleasing colour theme.

I used Photos for Class and searched for a photo of an office space with identifiable productivity tools.

I found an interesting article about productivity gains using two monitors.  The article includes a lot of data about the time saved in switching between documents if you have only one screen.  I thought it would be an interesting exercise to ask the students to interpret the data and showing it in an infographic.  There are also a lot of facts in this article about how many times people switch documents.

The students can find a suitable background and import it into easel.ly.  They can use the objects to report the facts and they can create a chart.   My reflections about using the tool are that it is interesting, but could become very time consuming and will need to be carefully planned so that the students don’t get bogged down in perfecting the use of the tool and have nothing to show for their work.  I could insist that the students create a plan for their infographic.  I could also ensure that I scaffolded their learning about how to use each of the tools in easel.ly.  Perhaps I could ask each student to complete one task and then demonstrate how to do that task to create a video on how to do that task and upload it so that others can view it.  I think I would like to use instructional differentiation as well to set different tasks for each of the groups based on ability so that I am challenge each of the groups of students.

Here is the example of what I created.

It is not possible to embed it into Blogger, but I can share it here.

Reflective Learning:

# Don’t try to do too much at once.  Set an achievable goal and then improve on that.

# Create a plan on paper first of what the infographic should show.

# Create different versions of the infographic so that you can easily revert to a previous draft if you don’t like the current direction.

# Time was wasted because I had an application in mind, but I chose a tool that wasn’t able to do the application.  I had to either choose and learn another tool or modify the application.  I chose to modify the application.  Because I modified the application I produced an end product that I wasn’t entirely happy with.  Really, I should have gone back and chosen the right tool.  In class I would have a fixed learning outcome and I would not be able to modify the application as I did here.

# Interactive infographics are another level from what I was able to achieve in this very brief foray into infographics.  One initial idea was to add comments on each of the productivity items in the image that I used – Easel.ly does not allow this type of functionality and to add the mouse hover over, I would be better off using a bookmarking tool.

Your comments:

Have you tried Easel.ly? 

Do you have any timesavers for working with digital media?

Blog Reflection 4.4 Video

Video

 I think video is wonderful, however in a class situation, any video goes over differently than in a distance mode of study.  If using video as a tool to review or for research, one-on-one, this is great, but I would not be using large sections of video in my class.  The longest any video can be is 10 minutes and should be shorter - 3 - 4 minutes for any technical information.  Detail of content does not need to be compromised, the video is very short 'sound bytes'.  Our media fueled society has caused this.

While my son was away at an enrichment camp in year 5, he did some very cool iPad animation.  There was some specific kit (iPad tripod) that was used (STEAM funded) and they created their own learning stories about a science experiment.  I can't find the app today, I would need go and find the app again.  The quality of animation that was achieved was very good.  However, this field moves very quickly.  This would be a good example of learner generated content.  I would have enjoyed it if the camp had uploaded all of the animations onto a class wiki so that we could see what they all created.  The other point I want to make here is the iPad and Apple video is much easier than anything to do with Android OS or Windows OS.  Windows Movie Maker is OK as a tool and I have used it, but the iPad is king with anything to do with video or audio and adding that to a wiki.  This is because of the dreaded iTunes, which sometimes makes me want to cry, but what it does is it enforces a standard for all the parts and all of the different parts are fairly potable and readable.

iPad apps are also really engaging.  I have used a bird app which is as detailed as the most comprehensive bird identification book in the library, but also includes different photos, videos, recordings of the calls and an interactive feature using location and giving only birds that can be found in that location.  I used the bird app on iPads at a bush gardens walk which was instead of providing the reference books for children to lookup.  Far more engaging because we found we could call up the birds by playing the audio and we could find out more about some of the birds that we knew to be at the gardens, but they weren't showing themselves that day ;-) 

SAMR for using video learner-accessed vs learner generated

Context	Substitution	Augmentation	Modification	Redefinition
Learner-accessed	Students watch a video online and complete a list of reflective questions about the content of the video	Students watch an online video and complete an online quiz designed to test their understanding of the video.	Students use a bookmarking tool to watch a video online and add their comments about interactive questions and view comments made by other students.	Students view an online video and they pose questions via their own video to which other students can reply with their own video response.
Learner- generated	Students use video editing tool such as Movie Maker to record a short home movie showing a class engineering project that they have completed similar to making a presentation in front of class.  They play the movie to the class.	Students create the video with Movie Maker recording an interview about their project and they upload their movie to the class wiki.	Students create a video with Movie Maker and upload the movie to the class wiki.  Other students use a bookmarking tool to perform a peer evaluation of the movie.	Students share their short movie online in a global educational forum for that particular subject and receive video responses from other groups.

(SAMR template table adapted from Technology Is Learning)

Questions:

Have you used iPads in your lessons?

What's your favourite app?

What do you think about the wiki being the main place to share things with the families?

Blog Reflection 4.2

Reflection 4.2 Podcasts

Podcasts are short audio recordings (up to 12 minutes long) saved as a MP3 and stored on a website or wiki in an archived manner so that people can access them.  Many educators create recordings of lessons.  Podcasts are often transformed with some video and English subtitles as can be seen in the Khan Academy math lessons (enhanced podcasts).  I think that the addition of the chalkboard and the English subtitles appeals to more than the auditory learners and helps the visual learners to benefit from the recordings.  There are also video podcasts which include video of the speaker (vodcasts).  Here is an example of an enhanced podcast showing how to do long division.  http://mrcoley.com/media/long_division/long_division.html.

When I was in grade 1 & 2 I did school of the air and all of my course material was in correspondence mode.  This was in 1978/79 and so there was a 1 hour class every week via UHF radio, but other than that, my parents were my teachers because I was not old enough to read the course materials myself.  Eventually my parents got a governess for me, but before that, my Dad (who was too busy to do lessons during the day for me) would make recordings onto a tape recorder at night for me and I would play the recorded readings and do the activities for math that way during the day.  Through the power of the Internet, every child has the ability to use google and find enhanced podcasts and vodcasts to teach any subject that they desire.  During my own schooling I missed some pretty important number sense learning in about grade 8 and this affected the rest of my schooling and my University career.  My parents and I knew that I had missed something fairly important and we asked the Math teacher to do some lunch time lessons.  I remember that he did one lesson with me, but he wasn’t able to explain it to me.  If I were in the city, probably my parents would have hired a math tutor and then I would have learned this.  Now, if students and parents have the knowledge, they can access the information themselves.  But initially, they have to have a growth mindset and not a fixed mindset.  Also, they have to know where to look and they need to know about the curriculum. Before I started to study secondary education, we wanted to help my son to understand the Math that I missed and some friends introduced us to Khan Academy.  

Something that studying secondary education is impressing on me is that we learn a lot about a topic once we try to teach it to someone else.  So, there is firstly merit in creating podcasts that can replicate and re-teach class activities to students.  Then there is merit in allowing the students to create the podcasts themselves to teach a subject because they add their own touch, they have a greater stake and therefore interest in the project and they learn more by having to think how they would teach someone else.

SAMR for using audio learner-accessed vs learner generated

Context	Substitution	Augmentation	Modification	Redefinition
Learner-accessed	Create a podcast or vodcast for key content of each lesson and make it available on the class wiki for students to download and listen to later.	Create a value added podcast of key lessons with online quiz to answer to check their learning – which can uploaded to the class wiki.	Create a set of vodcast key lessons with associated quizzes that are intelligent tracking student progress and offering less or more support based on performance on the quiz questions already answered.	Create a set of vodcast tutorials that guide the students through the class that they can use in differentiated instruction groups after initial group introduction of the lesson.
Learner- generated	As the students to prepare the spoken part of a power point presentation into an MP3 file and have them submit the powerpoint with embedded mp3 files for assessment.	Create an audio quiz for the end of their powerpoint session and compile the results of that quiz.	Place the powerpoint with the quiz online for a sister class to view and complete the quiz.	Create one large presentation as a shell and ask students to create an audio mp3 file for difference topics in the presentation and upload them on the class wiki.

(SAMR template table adapted from Technology Is Learning)

Questions:

 Do you use vodcasts such as Khan Academy to revise numeracy & literacy skills? 

Do you do school of the air?  How have things changed from the old UHF 1 hour per week class?