Sep/090
PPT, part 2: Simple Animations
I have been experimenting lately with using PPT as a simple animation editor. This functionality has been around for a long time, but I have only started using it recently. The first animation I created was a short cartoon used to tell my students about an upcoming assignment. I thought it would be more entertaining to do it this way, and the students could watch it multiple times. I did notice a decrease in the number of e-mails from students asking for clarification, and some of the students mimicked this technique in their final projects. This is the highest form of flattery, right? Or kissing up. You can see this movie here.
More recently, I created a simple animation to demonstrate the concept of scope and sequence. Thankfully, I saved the original PPT file, and I intend to go back in and modify it a little bit. But you get the point. I didn't make a big deal of it in my class, but the students had access to the animation and watched it on their own. A couple of them gave me feedback that they thought it was cool. That wasn't my objective, but I was glad to know they enjoyed it.
If you are interested in doing something like this, you will first need to learn how to use the Custom animation tool in PPT. This is something you can look up on the Web, and there are several good tutorial out there. Then, you will need a plug-in to save the PPT file into a SWF animation. I use the free version of iSpring, but you may know of other tools. I will probably be making more of these in the future, especially as I move some of my classes to the online environment. I have found that technology used in this way actually helps students in both types of classes, so whether you teach online or F2F, this is worth exploring.
Jun/090
Going the Distance
It's summer, which means I have once again agreed to teach a couple of online classes for a college in my hometown. I have done this intermittently for the past 7 years (either online or face-to-face), and it's always a great experience. I've tinkered with the class since the first time I taught it, and I think I am ready to roll for another semester. An article I read recently discussed multi-scaffolding for multimedia enhanced instruction, which prompted me to rethink some of the ways I'm using technology in the online class.
The authors propose a typology consisting of 4 types of scaffolds:
- Situated video
- Screencasts
- Intelligent agents (virtual reality stuff)
- Collaboration zone
Though I don't think each of these types of scaffolding is essential for the classes I am teaching, it certainly provides a framework to which to compare my current practices. This is one reason I think it's so easy to get into a teaching rut. It's not that teachers don't want to do innovative and engaging things with their students, but they simply don't have a point of comparison to their current practices. Peggy Ertmer identifies a community of practice, among other things, as an essential agent in helping teachers transform their pedagogical beliefs toward the use of educational technology. Think about how hard it is to make changes in isolation, whether that change is a New Year's resolution or a new of way of doing a job you've performed for many years. Without someone to compare yourself to and offer encouragement, most ideas don't make it past the intention stage.
In my experience, online classes have been the ultimate silo. Most colleges use some sort of course management platform, and only the instructor and students have access to course materials. On one hand, this is nice because I don't want random people disrupting the class. On the other hand, no other instructors ever see what I am doing, and vice versa. In this case, I live almost 2,000 miles from the campus, but even the instructors who occupy the same physical space don't share or discuss their teaching practices.
So, at the onset of my new summer term, I am thankful for having run across the work of Aaron Doering and his colleagues. While I may not immediately employ each of the multi-scaffolding tools in this course, I have re-thought how I might support both student learning and self-efficacy in the online environment through smarter uses of technology.
