Last Monday’s class was very
interesting and relevant thanks to the insightful project suggestions given
during the group discussion exercise. One such suggestion was that our team consider
including “community” elements to our digital instruction. This community could
be as simple as a forum in which elementary teachers share their experience
using play-based teaching strategies. In terms of feedback, this kind of
community tool could also be used to collect user ideas for future revisions of
the instruction. Although, one of our primary concerns is that, in a real-world
situation, there would not be enough users post content and contribute to the
community. In recognition of this limitation, our team is considering
alternative ways to give our users the chance to collaborate and share ideas.
One solution might be to provide users with an easy guide to forums and other
online communities currently in operation. Edutopia.com is an example of one
such community.
Besides offering a way for
teachers to share ideas and learn about new educational strategies, Edutopia
may also be a prime resource once we begin more thoroughly researching kindergarten
and 1st grade learning environments. The following link leads to the
site’s lower elementary educational resources page. http://www.edutopia.org/grade-level-k-2
Also, because our instruction
plans to include examples of play-based activities, we were given the
suggestion that videos could be employed to clearly show how certain activities
are performed in class. I think videos could be an entertaining and engaging
way to keep users of our instruction interested in the intervention. However,
because our group has only minimal videography skills, there are concerns
regarding the quality of videos would could create. That said, I personally
have regained some confidence in our ability to overcome technical challenges.
This confidence is in mainly due to our group’s ability to quickly create the “snow”
audio instruction. Even though none of us knew the best way to create the audio
track, we successfully created the audio track with much less difficulty than I had anticipated.
-Scott
Hello Scott!
ReplyDeleteOnce again, I really enjoyed your post this week. We are certainly in agreement that this week’s lesson made significant contributions to the design process. I like the idea of including a “community” element. As you mentioned, this would likely inform future revisions, but I also think the discussions might help you assess the impact of the training. For instance, the posts might reveal whether participants acquired the intended skills, knowledge, and attitude.
I understand your concern related to the level of participation you might receive if you create your own community. I think you might be on to something with Edutopia. When there are so many different sites and blogs out there, I believe there is value in consolidating some of these idea exchanges and Edutopia may represent an ideal place for that. Perhaps you could have an invite on your training site that says something to the effect of “Please join our discussion on play-based learning at Edutopia by going to www.edutopia.org….” This way you might still obtain some of the formative type of information you are hoping for, but the conversation would be based in a larger learning community. This might also encourage more users to discover your training.
In terms of video technology, my team was able to work with the green screen this week. We completed our editing in iMovie, which happens to be a very user-friendly program. Please let me know if you have any questions related to using this technology. I would like to ask what program you used to create the audio file. We are presently using Audacity to fulfill our audio editing needs. Please let me know if you have found other audio software to be better suited for the task. Take care and have a great week, Scott.
-Kipp
Hi Kipp,
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comments! We actually also used Audacity to create the audio track. It was very user-friendly as well. The more success I have using these "simple" design tools the more confident I am to try working with the more complex Adobe design programs.
-Scott