Archive for the ‘teaching’ Category

using video for learning and more flipping in the classroom

Monday, April 30th, 2012

I’ve been thinking about the use of video in teaching and learning and how we might use video to help in assessment. There’s been much written about using video resources (eg. Khan Academy) and the flipped classroom (or reverse instruction) where students watch first and then come to class to discuss the material. I’m pleased to see more discussion around the ability to watch a video and then add comments at specific points in the timeline of the video rather than just have the video as a discreet object. This is very useful and I believe has the potential for powerful learning as it allows for personal, peer and teacher feedback on a student’s own work. The flip is to have student assess themselves…

Video capture
Photo credit: psicologiaclinica

A tweet by Jenny Luca pointing to her blog post on using Vialogues (video & dialogues) indicated to me that more & more people are recognising the usefulness in education of being able to comment on video. The service suggests users to start a meaningful conversation and to, Create, Invite, Interact and Share. Jenny focused on using the video as a screencast and explanatory learning resource and I think this is a great way for student to interact with a resource and comment with questions, their understanding, or need for further enquiry. 

I’m also interested in how students might reflect on their own performance, say as a beginning teacher, nurse, psychologist, doctor, counsellor etc. A friend of mine has been working with a technology at RMIT called the Media Annotation Tool that allows for students to comment on an uploaded video (of themselves or for particular task) and then receive peer feedback on their comments/reflection before the teacher provides some feedback.  Megan Colasante has written a paper about this project, Using video annotation to reflect on and evaluate physical education pre-service teaching practice. I believe this tool has promise and hope development continues. 

There could be some remarkable power in a reflection when you have to watch your own performance (say against that of an expert) and then receive constructive feedback on your comments and performance – this should lead to engaged and meaningful learning. 

There are other tools that do similar things such as Voicethread (uses still rather than video) and the new TedEd Website features video lessons that can be ‘flipped’ and give teachers the opportunity to create lessons with reflective questions built in, but not the capacity to annotate the video. With video becoming more ubiquitous as students are now able to easily capture learning and practice moments via a smart device. I also understand that it may not always be suitable to annotate/comment after the fact, as it might be necessary to assess something while it’s happening live and not to have to watch a performance twice. While there are some professional video recording and coding applications available, I’m looking forward to further educational developments in this space. Of course there’s many other ways to use video for learning, but the idea of comments and annotations at specific points and events in a performance is very useful. The bonus would be the capacity of multiple comment tracks and maybe even some control over their visibility. 

In the meantime I’ll also be investigating the usefulness of point of view (POV) glasses for this sort of application.

what is learning anyway? – there are/have been, some theories.

Monday, April 23rd, 2012

I’ve been following Donald Clark’s blog series on learning theorists and found it enlightening and useful. On March 17th he began a blog marathon of 50 blogs on learning theorists over 50 days. He ‘presents fifty major shapers and movers in learning, theorists, practitioners and those directly relevant to e-learning.’ He started with the Greeks and is just over halfway through his list and about to begin discussing major influencers in the field of e-learning before finishing with some posts on the area of training. 

N n+1
Photo by Jan Tik

What I’ve particularly liked is the outline that has been used for each learning theorist.  They include an:

  • Overview of the individual
  • Specific theory and ideas on learning
  • Relevance to learning
  • Implications for E-learning
  • Conclusion
  • Bibliography

Where appropriate the author has also provided evidence that highlights the flaws in a particular theory and how it has been proved incorrect.

Any pre-service teacher or learning professional involved at any level, would do well to spend some time absorbing these overviews to help provide a context to what we understand what good teaching and learning might be. Thanks Donald…

the storm before the calm (has passed)

Wednesday, July 6th, 2011

The last few weeks have been the storm before the calm. My university has chosen D2L to replace our Blackboard LMS (WebCT Vista) and we’ve been busy implementing for Trimester 2. As usual lots to sort out, configuration, training, educational development, meetings, negotiations, hand holding, requesting, testing and trialling. This week we went live with a limited number of units/subjects and for my Faculty this means around 100 staff and nearly 4,000 students – we’re all set for when teaching starts next week. There’ll be some evaluation of the processes and how it’s all gone once things have settled down and teaching’s well underway. All good and exciting work, but it’s been a wild ride that’s been a storm at times, and now I’m ready for some calm.

Storm in Colorado
Storms in Colorado (photo credit Jerry W. Lewis)

So, for some calm I’m heading over to Denver, Colorado on Friday where I’ll be attending the Fusion 2011 Desire2Learn users conference. I’m looking forward to it as it will be the first D2L conference I’ve attended, I’ve never been to Denver before, and the weather’s going to be much warmer than I’ve been experiencing lately (and I hope it’s calmer than the photo I found to illustrate this post).

I’m also looking forward to meeting other D2L users and having an opportunity to share our stories while doing some networking. The D2L staff will also have my attention as we get to know each other and establish our partnership as client and vendor. Amongst other things, I’ll be learning as much as I can about the ePortfolio tool and how others are using D2L for blended learning.  I’ll also be giving a presentation with a colleague in which we will provide two perspectives (learning systems and an academic) of the implementation process so far. I’ll be sharing some insights via twitter of course (@colwar) and intend to supplement them here with some blog posts.

Now to pack my bags – I hope there’s some good company & movies on the plane.

re-imagining assessment – can it be a reusable resource?

Tuesday, June 14th, 2011

It was via a recent tweet by my friend @rellypops that I was introduced to a wonderful collection of resources that got me thinking about student assessment and how we might begin to provide other forms of evaluation that provide more scope for creativity and engagement than the ubiquitous essay.

Narelle’s tweet led me to the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Connections site that invites its “staff to offer their personal perspectives on works of art in the Museum’s vast collection. Their voices range from the authoritative to the highly subjective, and touch upon any number of themes and concepts.”

MMA Connections Hands

What I like about this project of a potential 100 episodes, is that each person brings a knowledge and passion to the subject they are covering. They have selected specific art works from the museum that focus on, or reference a theme, such as Hands, City, Water, Light, Maps, etc. I think this is a great resource and models a nice format that could be used by students to use in assessments such as reports. To take a problem, issue, or topic and to research around that, collecting relevant information in text with illustrative and supporting images, and then creating a story that links the parts to create a snapshot that is greater than the whole. This type of project outcome can quickly become a useful collection to share with other students and a resource to add to an ePortfolio. Are we able to rethink assessment so that it is conceptualised as a potential resource, something of value that is reusable?

Not that everyone has the capacity to develop a website such as this with it production values, but there are a number of other ways to create such a multimedia collection. You could do this as a narrated PowerPoint (such as Pecha Kucha style), or online using Voicethread, or an image sequence in QuickTime with an audio track that is saved as video, or a even with screen capture software such as Camtasia. I’m sure there would be many more… Can you suggest other ways?

Of course this isn’t to dismiss the fact that these could also be done in ‘analogue’ by creating a book or folio by hand. I’m just cognisant of the benefit of a digital format and that is can be shared with many. Is anyone already doing and happy to share their story?

I’d love to hear about your ideas about thinking differently about assessment, particularly in higher education.

So what’s the problem with lecture recordings?

Monday, April 18th, 2011

There has been some recent commentary about the value of recording lectures at university and elsewhere (see Mark Smithers’ blog and comments). To set up and automate such a system involve high infrastructure costs, and questions being asked about the return on investment with regard to use & reuse of recordings. Just how

At my university there is a significant usage of recorded lectures, and students demand access to them. Staff are stressed over whether the recordings have worked and are of good quality. Some staff even fear that they will receive bad student evaluations if the system fails and students complain over not having access to recorded lectures to supposedly review their study.

Microphone

Photo credit: Ben McLeod

I don’t want to go into the pros and cons of recorded lectures or of the systems that support them. What I wanted to write about was the process we’ve just begun of reviewing our current lecture recording system. We undertook a logic mapping workshop with relevant stakeholders from across the university and spent some time working through strengths, problems, solutions and benefits (sort of like SWOT but different).

One of the outcomes of this process was to suggest that we may need to think differently about our idea of what a lecture is. The technology has been constraining the paradigm of what we understand the lecture to be. Originally developed to be able to record the delivery of an oration and maybe also capture a series of powerpoint slide or some video, the software was modelled on the idea of one teacher talking to an audience (of students). Blended and flexible learning paradigms are showing us that the traditional oration (while appropriate in some circumstances) needs to be adjusted to support new ways of teaching and learning.

I’ve been encouraged that we will be developing a proposal and framework that understands that we may need to record more than just a stand & deliver lecture. We’ll be seeking to be able to record interactive lectures, short ad-hoc talks & presentations (with or without video). The aim then, is to also be a catalyst to help teachers come to understand different models for getting a message across.

As Stephen Downes recently argued in a debate, ‘The Lecture Must Stand’, it just needs to be adapted appropriate to the need.

 

mobile devices in education – is the iPad proving itself useful?

Saturday, September 4th, 2010

I’ve been thinking lately about the impact of mobile devices in education and wondering what some of my colleagues are thinking about using an iPad. There’s been a moratorium at my workplace on purchasing the iPad with university funds. We haven’t really heard the reason for this, but understand some work is being done on how they can be implemented. I just want one to test, evaluate, and use at work with the aim of determining their usefulness for supporting professional development and learning and teaching. While initially acknowledged as a brilliant tool for consuming content, I’m coming to understand that the third party apps available for the iPad will make it just as useful for content creation and collaboration.

So, I’m waiting for one – but there’s quite a few of the devices appearing and they been purchased by individuals who are using them at work. I did chat to one person who was struggling trying to keep the device going during a meeting. It seemed the bluetooth keyboard was using more power then the recharger could supply (I’ll have to ask some more questions about that). Someone else was going paperless and saving all their attachments (meeting agendas, minutes, reports etc.) to iBook as pdfs and reading them off the bookshelf. There might be other ways to do this and maybe converting to epub would be better for reading. Need to do some experimenting for myself I think.

Academics are finding that students are bringing their iPads to class and using them as an instant research resource. There may an issue of distraction etc. but could be useful if managed correctly for specific class work for either individuals or groups. They can also be used with a document camera (& the optional vga connector for TVs/projectors) to share what’s on the screen. Nice way to show capabilities and demonstrate apps such as interactive books, google earth, and discipline specific applications such as maths & science.

I recently read an article by Louisa Burnham, iPad Travelling Cold Turkey, where she reflected on using an iPad exclusively while travelling for 6 weeks in Europe and doing academic work. This gave me a good insight to what to expect and what’s possible with regard to working without a fully featured laptop. I’ll also be interested in the result of Dean Groom’s project underway at Macquarie where they are asking staff to evaluate their use of an iPad for a couple of months.

The iPad might just a step or two away from a device that will be the ultimate tool for learning (amongst other things). I haven’t been able to do a lot of testing myself yet, and look forward to being able to put one of these through it’s paces. I’m finding it hard to imagine that something might replace my MBP, but recognise that it’s going to happen sooner rather then later.

PS. and then there’s the new iPod Touch. Upgraded to include the new Apple iOS4, now features a camera and ability to capture HD video, do video chat/call via wireless using FaceTime, and has the 3 axis gyro built in. Cool!