Worked Example Screencast

Digital Story - Who needs Nick Burns when you can build your own computer!

The purpose of this digital story is to provide viewers with a complete narrative that explains what's inside a modern-day personal computer. To many, the how and why regarding how a computer works is a mystery. By giving the viewer a "tour" of a computer's innards, I hope to demystify just what exactly is inside.

Because these are pictures from computers I build myself, there was a familiarity with the subject matter, which both helped me personalize the story and also "own" it, as I had purchased all of the components and installed them with my own two hands.

By starting and ending with brief excerpts from Nick Burns, Your Company's Compute Guy, I hoped to add humor and hipness to a topic that is, let's face it, a bit geeky.

Those interested in taking the next step and attempting to build their own computers will find a number of great resources online, including tutorials like this one from PC Magazine.

Something I learned from this project is that the time can really add up quickly. Even though each of my slides were, on average, about 10 seconds long, my digital story ended up being 4:26 long. This just reinforces the importance of knowing what you want to say and sticking to the script. Tangents and sidetracks can derail a digital story and cause the viewer to lose interest.

Coherence Analysis

1.      What is the Coherence Principle and its most important constraints/criteria?

The Coherence Principal is the idea that humans can only process so much in their working  memory. By overloading instructional materials with redundant or unrelated visuals, audio effects, and background music, learners will less successfully be able to grasp the concepts and ideas the instructor wishes to impart.

2.      Describe and/or include one example of successful and one example of unsuccessful attempts to apply the Coherence Principle in actual instruction and training you have experienced, especially as it might be implemented in PowerPoint-based instruction and training. Have you ever seen this principle violated or abused? Identify the violations, including citations as needed from your textbook.

The Massachusetts State Police recently visited our high school to review safety procedures in the event of an intruder in the building. The officer who spoke to us had good presence and was articulate; unfortunately, the PowerPoint presentation that accompanied his lecture violated the Coherence Principle in two ways.

The first was that his presentation contained extraneous text. It was also set up in such a fashion that what was written on the slides was almost word-for-word what he was saying. The slides were dense with text and poorly spaced. It would have been more effective if he had paired his speech with relevant visuals and a couple of choice words. Sentences upon sentences of text on a PowerPoint presentation is always a bad idea.

The presentation did contain one visual, but it didn’t seem to be directly related to the material on the slide. I can’t remember what the image was, or what the material on that slide was about. This is likely because the image disrupted my ability to build an appropriate link to the material (Harp and Mayer, 1998).

An example of a successful presentation was one I saw today in a workshop I attended at the Technology and Literacy at the Beach conference in Myrtle Beach, SC. The presenter, who was speaking about social media tools in the classroom, had a PowerPoint slide that contained four words and a picture. The picture related directly to a point she was making about collaboration, and helped me to understand what she was talking about.

3.      Discuss the relationship of the Coherence Principle to other Multimedia Learning Principles examined thus far in your readings.

The Coherence Principle dovetails nicely with a number of Multimedia Learning Principles we’ve studied earlier. In particular, I thought of the Multimedia Principle, which advocates for the use of both text (either spoken or written) and visuals. While initially it might appear that the Multimedia Principal is in contrast with the Coherence Principle, the key to the Multimedia Principal is using graphics that support learning. The Coherence Principle warns against the dangers of using complex, tangentially-related visuals. Put into this context, it becomes evident that these two principles are complementary.

4.      Discuss the relationship of the Coherence Principle to fundamental theories of psychology as described by Clark & Mayer in your textbook.

While it would appear that employing the arousal theory when creating instructional materials would help to stimulate interest and engage readers in the material, old friend John Dewey reminds us that “interest cannot be added to an otherwise boring lesson like some kind of seasoning” (Dewey, 1913). When instruction is paired with extraneous audio or video effects, the learner is often distracted from the core content of the lesson by the very accoutrements employed to help foster learning!

5.      What do you personally like or dislike about this principle? Present a coherent, informed opinion and explain why you hold this opinion. Are there any limitations or qualifications of the principle (caveats) which the authors did not consider and, if so, what are they?

I like the soundness of this principle. When you think about it rationally, it makes sense. We can only process and pay attention to so much, so when you add too many elements, it’s only natural that focus on and attainment of the desired learning objective becomes lessened. On the other hand, I can see how flashy multimedia bits can be used successfully as activators or rewards, either prior to or after the chief instructional lesson. Problems come up when these effects are attempted to be implemented during the lesson.

I personally find it enjoyable to do work while listening to classical music. I’ll often play it in my classroom at a very low volume. Students say they enjoy it, so it’s something I’ll usually put on when students are doing independent work. I wonder, though, after having read this chapter, if that music is a hindrance, resulting in writing tasks taking more time, as the text suggests. I've be curious to do my own research experiment to find out.

References

Clark, R. C., & Mayer, R. E. (2008). E-learning and the science of instruction, 2nd edition. Pfeiffer: San Francisco, CA.

Dewey, J. (1913). Interest and effort in education. Cambridge, MA: Houghton Mifflin.

Harp, S.F., & Mayer, R.E. (1998). How seductive details do their damage: A theory of cognitive interest in science learning. Journal of Educational Psychology, 90, 414-434.

Write On! initial podcast

In the premiere podcast episode of Write On!, I provide an overview of the four types of journalistic leads - the news, feature, review, and opinion. Each article is different, and each requires a unique strategy. I talk about the chief aspects of each type of lead, and then provide actual examples from our school newspaper, Spotlight.

Click HERE for the link.

Write On! will feature writing tips, advice, and examples from a variety of genres, including newspaper, academic, and creative writing. Future topics could include "crafting thesis statements,""concluding with authority," and "the art of analysis."

I had a lot of fun recording this, channeling my own Mark Hunter from Pump Up The Volume. I was surprised how quickly I was able to fill the time. For future podcasts, I may try to limit the number of segments, or work at being more concise with my language and ideas. This was definitely a great learning experience, and I have a new reverence for the work of the radio personalities who entertain me on my way to and from work!

Project 1: Multimedia Instruction

One of the reasons I became an English and journalism teacher is because I enjoy reading, writing, and photography. Whenever I need to create instructional materials, I look for opportunities to hone my skills and practice my craft. That was very much the case with this assignment.

I knew I wanted to utilize a predominantly image heavy approach. Once I settled on the topic of panning and photography, I began to envision specific slides I thought would be effective in conveying this technique's chief principles. It didn't take long to realize that  not only would I probably be better off taking my own images, it would be more fun too.

I thought about also mentioning something about shutter speed, and how it can be manipulated to create some dramatic images that convey motion. But because I didn't want to overwhelm my viewer by introducing too much new information, I left out slides on shutter speed.

An effective follow-up to this presentation could be another about the role shutter speed plays in freezing objects and conveying motion, and how panning and shutter speed can work together to create some incredible exposures.

I've noticed it can be easy to throw too much at an audience too soon. Pacing, volume, and sequence matter, and its important to be mindful of them when designing instruction. It's also worth noting that an appropriate and manageable amount of material can be obfuscated if the delivery of that material is not done according to the principles of design.

Creating My Learning Log

After having initially set up my Learning Log in Wordpress  when I took EDTECH 501, I have since migrated back to Blogger. I've been using Blogger for more than five years, and I find it intuitive and easy to change settings and appearances to my liking.

Wordpress was usually a struggle to decide what to click on and what screen I wanted to be viewing in order to access what I thought it was that I wanted in order to change the thing I thought would give me the desired result I needed. Blogger is much simpler and more streamlined, yet still offers a high level of control and customization.

The Association for Educational Communications and Technology has created a variety of standards which this Learning Log will eventually demonstrate. This blog post represents Standard 2.3, Computer-Based Technologies. Not only am I using a computer to type this post, a server is allowing me to save this post "to the cloud," which allows me to share it with anyone who has the link.

Social media has transformed the web, and is working its way into the K-12 education sector. The EDTECH program at Boise State has allowed me to conceptualize the shift in learning that's possible with cloud applications and social media, and better incorporate them into my instruction. EDTECH is really about more than technology. It's about how people learn and think, and how certain environments can be created to foster and facilitate growth, learning, collaboration, risk-taking, and other such activities that are instrumental to education and progress.

EDTECH 513 Introduction

It's great to be sharing this blog space with all of you. I've been looking forward to taking this class since I first saw it in the EDTECH course catalog. Like most EDTECH classes, it promises a healthy mix of theory and practice. I'm looking forward to dabbling in both familiar and unfamiliar multimedia technologies this semester, and hope that with the knowledge we can acquire about how people learn, we'll be able to create multimedia content that's both engaging and effective.

I am in my eighth year of teaching high school English and Journalism. Over the years I've been acquiring classroom computers. I now have 25 workstations in my room (17 PCs and 8 netbooks), so I've really been able to apply cloud and social media tools (Google Docs, Blogger, Twitter, YouTube) into my pedagogy. It's still a work in progress, and there are usually weekly glitches we need to overcome, but I feel that as a whole, my students and I are able to be more productive because of the way we've integrated technology into the classroom.

Below is a vocabulary video I created earlier in the year as an exemplar for a new assignment designed to teach vocabulary in a meaningful way. While the students have done a nice job creating their own videos, part of me thinks the assignment could benefit from some refinement, so the videos max out at one minute, rather than two. I'm optimistic that I'll learn something this semester that will give me insights into how I can make this assignment (and others) more effective.

P.S. Before I read about this assignment, I posted comments on most of your profiles on the Moodle page. This looks like a great mix of students. I'm especially excited to have a couple of English teachers as colleagues this semester. I look forward to learning about ways you've integrated EDTECH into your curriculum, and hopefully trying out some of your ideas in my own classroom. Cheers!