Dear Superintendent Carter,
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I can’t believe we’ve reached the end of EDU 642 already! Three weeks is a very short time to learn about educational multimedia and the design principles behind them. I have thoroughly enjoyed this class for many reasons. I have had plenty of experiences with ed tech and informational technology throughout my career, however one area that I did get as much experience in was video editing so I was very excited to participate in the creation of the videos. My favorite activity to create by far was the animation video that I used with Powtoon. It was so much fun to work on animating the characters and props for my video.
The one major takeaway that I got from this course was the importance of backwards design. Prior to taking graduate courses with the MALDT program, I utilized educational technology with the technology being the primary focus on how I created my activities. Especially during the COVID shutdown I focused more on finding lessons to keep my students busy and worked the lessons around the technology I had available. After taking this class I have learned to have a clear learning target or standard in mind, and use specific educational technologies to support that learning target. The Mayer’s Principles of Multimedia were very helpful when it came to picking out different pictures or videos to use in my classroom. The one principle that I’ve learned the most from is the segmenting principle. Since I teach kindergarten it is hard to make sure that we are creating activities and multimedia that are engaging but also not overwhelming for their young brains. Segmenting is so important in video creation, giving students opportunities to process the information they just learned. When I do videos in Seesaw I will make sure to break down each topic piece by piece and remember the I Do, We Do, You Do method even when creating asynchronous videos. Overall I believe this course has transformed my teaching to be very thoughtful and strategic on how to utilize multimedia with my class. It is not helpful to create multimedia for the class just to have something splashy or exciting for the students to look at. Instead, teachers should find a way to use multimedia to enhance important targets and lessons and transform those activities to create new ways that students can show their learning. The final week in EDU 642! It has went by really fast. This final week we have been looking at how to enhance our videos to do more than just simple screencasting. Below are links to my three videos:
Assessment on Edpuzzle - When I do read alouds in class I often do check for understanding as I am reading the story. I will as verbal questions and call on students throughout the story. If we go to virtual that will become very difficult. Which is why using Edpuzzle to have check for understanding as students watch videos is very useful! Animation with Powtoon - Even though we are going face to face I will be sending parents and students introduction videos about my classroom over Seesaw before class starts. One of the videos will be introducing the families to my classroom guidelines and what the expectations for the year will be. Capture Whiteboard with Screencasting - In my previous video on silent e I did something similar to this video however this time it is the first video that I work on math problem solving. Throughout the video I utilize more of the "interactive whiteboard" or drawing tools that Seesaw has to offer. The second week in EDU 642 had us analyzing and creating educational videos for our class. The first task I analyzed Jack Harmann's Silent e video because I felt that CVCe words were something my students struggled with during COVID shutdown. I wanted to make sure I found multimedia that was useful for key learning targets and standards as referenced in my last blog post. This time around I thought about what I wanted my students to be able to do and how I wanted them to learn it and was able to find a neat Jack Hartmann video that followed Mayer's Principles of Multimedia.
The next two activities were the videos that I needed to create for my class. I tried to keep with the phonics and phonological awareness theme for both videos. The first video was a video I created as an extension from Jack Hartmann's video guiding students in reading and decoding CVCe words. I tried to make sure to apply the segmenting principle with this video providing ways for I Do, We Do, You within the video. I first modeled the strategy to my students using Seesaw drawing tools. Then I used the highlight tool from Screencast-O-Matic to have them interact with sounding out the words along with the video. Then I showed them how to do the activity within Seesaw. My second video was more difficult in my opinion. The second video was a video of me teaching students phonemic awareness using tap it out. I tried to make both videos be useful in a virtual or blended setting where I could be teaching the students but it not actually be face to face. Making this video was difficult because I was teaching the topic as if I had the student right there face to face. It was awkward to do "wait time" like a student was actually there but in the end I felt it worked out. This week was very helpful for me as I have never created videos for my class prior to EDU 642 so it was fun to get some experience. It looks like were are making more complex videos next week which I am looking forward to. This week in EDU 642 we are looking at design principles when it comes to video creation in education. Below are two videos that I created for the video creation assignment . The first video is a continuation from the lesson on silent e that was covered the video evaluation assignment. Here is the guided and independent practice portion of the silent e lesson. The video created is meant for a virtual or blended learning setting using Seesaw as my kindergarten class LMS. There were many Mayer's design principles included in this video however there were a video that were very prevalent. The first principle was the coherence principle. I tried to make the video with clear visuals and very little distractions. The second principle that I used was the signaling principle. When I wanted to draw my students attention to the letters that were being sounded out, I used the yellow circle to direct the students attention to that part of the screen. The last principle was the modality principle. I clearly narrated the lesson and made it easy for students to follow along at home. The next video focuses on phonemic awareness as opposed to phonics. It is a teaching strategy where I am teaching my kindergarten student how to "tap-it-out" when segmenting phonemes. This video will also be used in a virtual or blended learning setting. The three Mayer's Principles of Design that were utilized in this video were; segmenting, modality, and personalization. Even though in this video there were no points where students were asked to pause the video, I segmented the video into clear I do, we do, you do portions. I once again used voice by recording the video in my own voice and used easy to understand language. I also explained everything in age appropriate terms for kindergarten. For my video evaluation I chose to evaluate Jack Hartmann's Silent e video. I would use this video in my kindergarten classroom later in the year around February or March. The lesson this video would help teach is how to read words when they have an e at the end of the word. Before playing this video for my students I would have already taught my students about what long vowel sounds were and how to differentiate those sounds from short vowel sounds. We would play games and practice drills to determine when words have long or short vowels in them. Then I would have them play this video in Seesaw where they are able to see how e changes a short vowel into a long vowel. Then in their exit activity the words that were used in the video would be posted in their student sample in Seesaw. The students would use the microphone tool to record themselves reading the words as a review. This mini-lesson would be one of many lessons that help scaffold the silent e into their schema.
When evaluating this video I based it on the 10 Factors of Choosing the Right Podcasts for Your Classroom and applied them to videos. Looking at the first factor I felt that the video was very appropriate for kindergarten since it is important that our emerging readers are able to understand basic phonics skills and be able to apply them to their reading. Factors 3, 4, and 5 look at the presentation of the content and format of the video. The video is very clear and has visuals that young children can understand. Jack Hartmann has great energy and teaches concepts in song form that help keep children engaged. Factor 7 asks if the source is a credible source. I view Jack Hartmann as a very credible source as his wife who has been an elementary teacher for over 20 years is a major contributor to all of his academic videos. I thought the video also enhanced learning on the topic with highlighting the vowel and Jack Hartmann covering the silent e and saying "shhh". What would have made the video even better is if Jack Hartmann engaged the viewer by prompting them to practice some of the words. I also applied Mayer's Principles of Multimedia Design to my evaluation of the video. The video did not have any distractions when looking at the coherence principle, the video used highlighting of vowel letters and silent e for signalling, it keeps everything clean and does not have a lot of extra text or pictures, and he segments the video with little singing breaks. There was pre-training in the beginning of the video to show the students how to apply the silent e principle but there would require some pre-training on my part to teach students what long vowels are. When students are looking at the silent e words and learning about them the modality principle is addressed as he narrates the words. He does not show his face during the teaching part or practicing parts of the video which addresses the imaging principle. After using these two resources to help me evaluate the video I feel that Jack Hartmann's Silent e video is a good video to use in my virtual classroom or blended portions of my face to face classroom. Jack Hartmann has been a trusted face in educational videos for years and I look forward to utilizing more of his videos in the future. This first week in EDU 642 focused much on creating images and artifacts that I could use in my virtual class. I felt much of what I had read and worked on was a review of topics previously covered in EDU 590 and EDU 643 but it to deepen my understanding of those topics.
Task 2 however was something I had not thought much about, backwards design when it comes to online teaching. Most of what I had done during the spring shutdown was merely activities that I tried to adapt to a theme or unit that I did face to face. I didn't think much about standards and learning targets. The podcast really helped me focus my thoughts on how to create activities that are based on the common core standards and clear learning targets. From this learning I was able to create a rubric that I can use to assess my students doing a book retell. While my students will not be able to read the rubric it makes it much easier for me to organize my thoughts and identify exactly what it is I will be providing them feedback on. I can then apply scores from the rubric to the skills feature that is embedded within Seesaw. Task 3, the Bitmoji classroom, was something I thought would be not useful in my class. I thought sure it looked cutesy, but I wasn't sure how it would serve a purpose when it came to providing my students with online content. However as I looked and explored deeper, I saw what a benefit it would be to use the Bitmoji classroom as a static place for students to go to in Seesaw, where they can access video announcements, have an easy place to get to iReady and Dreambox, and have a link to our Google Meets. It would also give them more of a feel of being in the actual classroom. I look forward to next week where we will get to create videos that we can use in our classroom. For our final assignment for week 1 of EDU 642, we were to look at the topics of copyright, creative commons, and public domain items. In this assignment we are to create an artifact or collect five resources that include the categories mentioned. I decided to collect resources that I would use for my "Welcome to School" unit. These items will be incorporated into Seesaw for different activities virtually and in the classroom. This unit will introduce my students to the classroom and school procedures. Resource 1:Name: Greet Someone Without Touching | Greet From 6 Feet | Jack Hartmann social distancing song Author's Name: Jack Hartmann Link: https://youtu.be/OMg6t-z8KEI Copyright Information: Copyrighted - Using for Educational Purposes Resource 2:Resource 3Resource 4:Name: Varee Kindergarten School Author's Name: Perfect Homes Link: Here Copyright Information: Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0) Resource 5:Name: Kindergarten Rocks!
Author's Name: The Teacher's Library Link: https://youtu.be/tzZHRmWnpE8 Copyright Information: Copyrighted - Using for Educational Purposes In my class EDU 642 we were given the option to create a virtual Bitmoji classroom and set it up to be utilized within our virtual space. I have created a classroom that I will embed within Seesaw as an announcement post. Each and everyday I will post this Bitmoji classroom to Seesaw. In the virtual classroom it will have a link to a video with announcements, links to our adaptive literacy and math programs, and to our class Flipgrid. Also when students click on my Bitmoji they will be able to access a link to our synchronous location for when it's time to do face to face learning. Click on the image below to check out a preview of the classroom.
This week in EDU 642, we're learning about backwards design and how to develop our lessons based on clear learning targets. After we develop our learning starts and determining what we want the students to learn, when then need to figure out how we want students to show what they have learned. We do this in creating assessments and activities that tie right to the learning target or standard. It is important that when we create activities that we are developing clear rubrics that will help students, parents, and teachers understand what is expected of the students.
One of the assignments we were to do is to create a rubric for a media based project we would have students complete. For my media based project I will have students use Seesaw tools to retell a story of their choice. They can use drawing, video, and audio tools in their retell. They must identify the main details, setting, and characters in their retell. To increase social presence in my classroom, students will also have to respond to one peers work by asking a question using the audio tools in Seesaw and answering any questions that are asked of them. The rubric of this activity is here. |
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