Overview:
This week proved to be just as, if not more, successful as the previous two weeks in this course. I am finding a serious love for creating instructional media online, and I may have to join an intervention come school time! Although I am sad to see the EDU 642 journey come to an end, I am excited that I am this much closer to actually using some of these amazing instructional artifacts in my classroom this year. Let's dive into this week's fun with educational online tools!
Playposit and Powtoon:
Last week I spent a lot of time on Powtoon. And I do mean a lot of time. I think I took the "not so easy route" for making my instructional videos last week, but I really found that I loved the Powtoon video maker, and I thought it suited my needs quite well. That is why I decided to use it again this week to make some of my instruction. This week, I wanted to push myself to make a Powtoon video that actually taught content to my students, seeing as how both of my videos last week were introduction/go-to videos.
For my topic, I chose to do it on my favorite thing to teach- Ancient Greece. Powtoon has this cool timelining feature, so I created a timeline of Ancient Greece’s wars and did a fun video on that. This was very time consuming, as the slides on Powtoon had to line up with the dates correctly. This was MUCH harder to do than an overview video, but I was very happy with the end result (as seen here).
I then decided that I wanted to take the video and make it interactive for my students. Really, I wanted them to use the video and have to answer questions on it. That’s when I decided to check out Playposit. Playposit was, at first, a bit tricky to get the hang of. I think part of the reason I struggled was because I wasn’t quite getting the lingo they were using (like calling things “bulbs). However, once, I created an awesome video assessment to go along with my Powtoon video I made. I was able to embed questions right into the video at certain points, and it truly made it interactive. I have never done anything like this before with my videos, and I think Playposit is another tool that I will be (over)utilizing this fall. Again, I was quite happy with the end results (found here), and I am very excited to use this assessment tool in my classroom.
Decision Time
For my last video, I decided to test out a few different tools. I tried on the accessibility piece, but was struggling to make it work with my content I already had. I tried out the cool online Whiteboard feature, which is now bookmarked on my computer, but again struggled to find a good fit with my content as of right now. Finally, I settled on creating audio for a slideshow using Screencastify. This was something that I had never heard of before, and I had a specific idea in mind as to how I would use this tool.
One thing my teammate and I are trying to do is convert our graphic organizer, our GRAPES notes that we use in every unit, to a Slides presentation for students to fill out as they move through lessons. I thought that adding audio to these slides would make for a great tool because a) it would provide more insightful directions and content, b) it would help take some of the “wordiness” off the slides, and c) it would be most likely be more user-friendly with middle schoolers than a bunch of reading.
I chose one of my Slides presentations (bear with me, it’s not the most “beautiful” presentation, but it’s a work in progress). I chose the GRAPES notes for India. The first thing I did was take off all extra and unnecessary wording on the Slides. I then added pictures and decided what I wanted each slide to have for audio. From there, I created individual audio pieces for each slide that walk through the slide students are on and give them helpful hints on what notes to take. The slides can be seen here.
Overall?
The slideshow presentation was actually the most nerve-wracking piece for me. It felt “too easy,” and the design itself was very simple. I think when it comes to technology, I often get into the mindset that if it’s easy, I’m not doing it right. When I realized this, I vowed to myself that I would try to shift my mindset away from that very fixed notion. Additionally, I need to remember what one of my professors said about this instructional media- it doesn’t have to be perfect (I’m going to be reminding myself that a lot….) Finally, I need to remember this: All work and no play leads to a very stressed out teacher- let’s have fun with instructional media this year!
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