Category: EDCI 336 (Page 2 of 2)

This week we discussed the pros and cons of online learning. With the Covid-19 pandemic being the most recent global event that impacted the way in which we go about learning, this topic is very relevant to today’s teaching. In my personal experience, I hated online learning in the beginning. I am and always have been a pen and paper person, someone who takes their notes by hand and minimizes the about of technology used in an educational setting. I think our world is already very much online and sometimes it’s best to keep aspects of our lives not involved in the online space. I found it incredibly difficult to focus in my classes with this adapted instruction and found the lectures to not be engaging. They made me lose interest in subjects I would have otherwise been excited about. I sat for hours a day staring at a screen and had no meaningful engagement or socialization with my classmates. Group work was made more complicated and painful to complete with online classes, too, with arranging meetings and generating quality discussions proving to be overly complicated.

On the other hand, I slowly learned to love aspects of online learning. It allowed me the freedom to complete my schooling from anywhere, which presented the opportunity to live in Mexico while completing my Spanish credits, as well as to live at home and save money while attending classes. Living in Mexico while taking mostly upper-level Spanish credits presented a special opportunity to master aspects of language acquisition that I would have otherwise not been able to experience confined to a UVic classroom. Online learning also offered a seamless transition to submitting assignments. I no longer needed to be physically present in class to submit a hard-copy assignment and could format everything digitally.

If I were to use online learning in the future, I would adapt my subject areas to focus less on group work and more on written or spoken assignments with creative elements. For example, I would have my students in social studies make a short video of them discussing the events of WWI, or my Spanish students create a voice-over presentation accompanying a PowerPoint of a Spanish speaking country. Furthermore, I think there is a great opportunity to allow for artistic creativity and incorporate something like Canava into practice.

During this week’s class, we looked at different digital tools and their integration into the classroom. We considered the significance of adopting a multimodal approach to information delivery, emphasizing the need to incorporate diverse media forms for better learning. The more images associated with descriptive words, the easier the concept is to grasp. For instance, we discussed explaining how a bicycle pump works. With a written description of its processes and an image of the pump, it’s less effective than a written description and step by step images of the pump’s functions. Key media is necessary for better understanding overall.

Our class also highlighted PowerPoint as an often-underestimated tool with immense potential in the classroom. While other animation and video software can be costly and challenging to master, PowerPoint stands out as a cost-effective and accessible alternative. It has a capacity for animations and slide customization, which makes it appealing to me a future teacher as a way to engage my students. It can be used to create simple worksheets or printables.

We also discussed other graphic creation tools to use in teaching. For example, we highlighted the use of word clouds and distilling clouds into graphics to demonstrate and express big ideas in learning . This could be used to make your own Wordle which, as a language teacher, will be beneficial in my future classrooms. Having a more visually-engaging and multimodal tool to use with my students, or have them try out themselves to practice vocabulary, would stimulate classroom learning in a better way than traditional methods. Furthermore, using something like photoshop in teaching would also be beneficial as it could be used to embellish images, making them humorous or edited to be more relevant to class content. As a potential assignment, students could use photoshop in Spanish class to create a powerpoint slide of what to do in a Spanish-speaking country and photoshop themselves in various tourist destinations. This would engage them with technology in different ways than a classic PowerPoint.

This week we had Rich McCue as a guest speaker talking about multimedia learning and screen casting in the classroom and some of its benefits. For some background info, he spoke about how our working memory has a limited capacity and how our brains must process short term memory to then encode it into long term memory. He said it’s important to attach new info to prior knowledge to help with this transformation. Audio and visual stimuli can help to make these connections with, for example, videos. Sometimes videos employ both audio, visual and written stimuli, which can result in students being overstimulated and distracted. For example, he said picture and picture videos are distracting to learning because there is too much going on, making them difficult to follow for learning purposes. Showing traditional videos to students in class can also be less engaging because they mindlessly follow along without having any aspect of engagement other than to simply watch.

Rich’s recommendation to solving this video engagement problem is using H5P, a plugin for WordPress that is used to make videos more interactive. We tried to make our own screen casts in class, but we were unable to upload it and utilize H5P, so we pivoted and took a look at the H5P website for tools. On H5P.org, they have a multitude of of examples and applications one could use to make their video more engaging. Many of these options I think would be beneficial in the classroom. For example, as a future Spanish teacher, I see H5P’s word search plugin as being useful to engage students in vocabulary. The template provides a table area where I could input my own vocabulary words and then complete the crossword puzzle interactively as a class. This might prove to be more engaging than a traditional paper word search that the students compete independently.

On the flip side, H5P might not be possible for all teachers to utilize, being that it requires a wifi connection. In Canada in particular, there are many schools in remote communities that might not have access to wifi and, therefore, it’s not accessible to all teachers to use as a resource. Furthermore, not all students prefer to learn in the same way. For some, a video itself might be stimulating enough and, when adding more interactive features to a video, might result in overstimulation.

Overall, a very insightful and helpful lecture!

This week we discussed SAMR and its role as a framework for evaluation of technology integration in teaching. Simply put, SAMR stands for substitution, augmentation, modification and redefinition. We discussed how SAMR is a spectrum of what is possible with technology and how we can use it to facilitate learning in the classroom. Having enhancing and transformative outcomes using technology is exactly what teachers need in the classroom today. Without consulting the SAMR model, I think educators are limiting their potential to connect with students and allow for student success in their own learning. In our pod, we discussed how the substitution aspect of the SAMR model could be beneficial for many subjects, but English in particular. For example, we discussed how a traditional essay assignment in an English class could be substituted as a TikTok about the same topic. By considering different learning preferences and multimedia tech options for students, their potential to learn and express their understanding and knowledge of a topic is increased. Substituting, in this case, offers an advantage over traditional methods. It makes the task more efficient or convenient for the student.

However, SAMR does not come without its drawbacks. While I’m on board with the idea of incorporating tech in the classroom to diversify teaching strategies and learning potentials, there is something to be said about excessive exposure to technology, or rather the devices that provide us with these technological tools. Our learning pod’s idea of a TikTok instead of an essay is a good idea for including relevant and engaging media in the assignment, but it requires a cellphone and time spent on said device. There is a lot of research out there discussing excessive cell phone use in adolescents and its negative impacts, with this being one article I found interesting. While the way in which the students are interacting with this technology is different to mindless scrolling on the app, they are still required to engage with a screen. We, as a society, are constantly consumed with technology and, while not always negative, sometimes there is such thing as too much. It seems to be forced down our throats these days, always pressured to keep up with the times and keep up with the world. This can feel overwhelming and overstimulating for many people. This a potential drawback I see to using the SAMR model and finding any possible way to incorporate technology in future teaching.