Cory Rausch's Blog

I actually had a really great time working with the Google Earth View tool. I’ve always liked maps and being able to get a drone view of my favorite golf course was fascinating. This is just a tour but I will likely play with it some more for my own enjoyment in the future.

https://earth.google.com/earth/d/1I7xiQZrE1xB3-NJ35Ofz2WQP7VX_xaDP?usp=sharing

Regarding my H5P creation; It wasn’t really an educational video explaining how to play solitaire, but I was trying to show that I had absorbed the skills necessary to create it, and I don’t think this fact precludes me from commenting in terms of evaluation.

The SAMR framework was something that I seemed to intuitively understand. I am an older student, and went to grade school when computers and video were not really used. I have seen the technological transformation of learning settings firsthand. It therefore made sense to choose the SAMR evaluation method as it mirrors my lived experience.

You can teach someone to play solitaire using a deck of cards. You can also show someone a video of another person playing cards, and narrate the imagery. But the inclusion of pop-up panels to draw the learner’s attention, engage them in the learning process, and enable them to go at their own pace is a large leap in terms of technology, and in many cases may be a necessary step to take to remain relevant in today’s educational settings.

The Segmenting principle is invoked whenever we interrupt a playing video, but this is an enhancement rather than an interruption. And the Dual Coding Principle is also utilized to provide viewers with both visuals and verbal information (Walsh 2017).

References

Walsh, Kelly. (July 20, 2017). Mayer’s 12 Principles of Multimedia Learning are a Powerful Design Resource. Retrieved from:

https://www.emergingedtech.com/2017/06/mayers-12-principles-of-multimedia-learning-are-a-powerful-design-resource/

It makes perfect sense to start a lesson plan with a goal (Alexander 2018). This prevents educators from losing the thrust of their lessons and keeps students on track and solidly in progress on the needed material. 

Also, the nature of the goal itself may make several design decisions for the content creator before creation begins. Certain material may lend itself to one type of content rather than others, thus streamlining the design process and focusing creative efforts.

There are several good reasons to include interactivity such as pop-up panels or questions in educational video content. Mayer’s principles of multimedia design contain at least four principles that I feel relate directly to video production for education and the efficacy of such materials for educational use.

The Signalling Principle is the most obvious one of Mayer’s principles (Walsh 2017). It says that using cues or objects to draw attention to certain important aspects of the relevant content is an effective way to increase efficient uptake of that content. What else is a pop-up question but a cue which draws the viewer’s attention? 

The Temporal Contiguity Principle is also important here (Walsh 2017). When a pop-up object occurs along with the arrival of important content, the two events serve to reinforce the importance of that content and allow the user/viewer to engage in an activity which references the content, deepening the impression made on the viewer.

The Segmenting Principle is a natural result of the use of pop-ups (Walsh 2017). They serve as a check on the pace of the lesson, allowing the viewer more freedom to engage in a way which is comfortable and stress-reducing.

Here’s an instructional video from a great golf content creator, Rick Shiels. What it lacks in pop-up multiple-choice questions it makes up for with GREAT cues.

References

Shiels, Rick. (March 5, 2018). The Complete Fix Your Slice Guide – Overview [MP4]. Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQq9ncQUrwk

Walsh, Kelly. (July 20, 2017). Mayer’s 12 Principles of Multimedia Learning are a Powerful Design Resource. Retrieved from:https://www.emergingedtech.com/2017/06/mayers-12-principles-of-multimedia-learning-are-a-powerful-design-resource/

Alexander, Kevin. (2018). The Design Process – Multimedia and Interactive Learning. [MP3] Retrieved from:https://edtechuvic.ca/edci337/2021/01/31/topic-4-the-design-process-lesson-planning-feb-1-7/

Whether intentional or not Dr. Pastore appeared to disregard the Redundancy Principle against repetition with words and text and was narrating the written parts of his PowerPoint. He was also quite light on the images, and so was not taking advantage of Dual coding as well as he could have been. He did make an interesting point, though. He said that when asked in surveys, students preferred to have all three types of information coding available, both audible, written and illustrative. I’m guessing that this is for studying purposes on the part of students and thus might force an instructor’s hand in the matter.

It might be a good idea, then, to remember to keep the written information in a PowerPoint to a minimum (i.e., labels or short phrases relating to images) if the presentation is going to involve a fair amount of speaking. In a professional or academic setting, the impact of a particular PowerPoint might be very important and so should take advantage of as many of these principles as possible.

I realize that I have both broken and upheld some of the principles spoken of by Dr. Pastore. I have been guilty of reading text from a slide and I have been careful to not read text from a slide! It can be a function of what sort of group I’m in or what kind of material we are presenting, or even how much time we have.

Here is a silly video I made to show some sort of facility with Screencastify, just a short video of me playing solitaire (I know, not much imagination), hope it’s not too boring for you, although it is mercifully short.

Oh, and there’s a picture of me killing Darth Vader in Las Vegas. So Fun!

I have seen too many bad PowerPoint presentations. It is always a struggle to listen, watch, and read the content being presented, and make sense of it at the time. So when I learned about the theory of Dual Coding (Sorden, 2012) I was relieved to discover that it wasn’t me.

It also made me realize that I was as guilty as anyone of making bad presentations myself. Thus in the future it will be incumbent upon me to reduce the amount of text in my presentations, include more images and/or videos, and make sure that what text is included is different from what I am saying while covering the same material (Sorden, 2012).

It was also interesting to learn about Flow (Khare, 2018). I have experienced this many, many times, as I am sure others have. In my case it was during my experiences playing guitar with my dad when I was young, skiing with my friends, golfing at a favorite course, or reading. Recreating that feeling of being transported while doing something would be a huge advantage to learning.

Source: https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Fi.insider.com%2F5592fe23eab8ea1e6ba9b6f6%3Fwidth%3D1200%26format%3Djpeg&imgrefurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.businessinsider.com%2Frich-people-like-to-read-2015-8&tbnid=tAathecHDbvyPM&vet=12ahUKEwjr8eipsevuAhXDgZ4KHdApDEkQMygmegUIARCsAg..i&docid=mj4dkSEhNyyQoM&w=1200&h=600&q=images%20of%20person%20reading&ved=2ahUKEwjr8eipsevuAhXDgZ4KHdApDEkQMygmegUIARCsAg

I can see why we are looking at these various theories. It will be our challenge to take this knowledge and use it together with our lived experience to create lessons that will have impact and help our future students successfully learn.

References

http://sorden.com/portfolio/sorden_draft_multimedia2012.pdf

https://medium.com/a-teachers-hat/the-state-of-flow-while-learning-d1d15f332fa0

One of my favorite experiences period (not just with multimedia) was going skiing out of bounds with a group of friends  that included a Parks Ranger named Tod when I was a ski bum in Alberta, circa 1990.  It was a a dangerous thing to do, but being 21 years old means that danger doesn’t have much meaning, so off we went into the Rockies just west of Lake Louise. Tod was very good at this and told us how to survive the experience. “No talking,” he said sternly. “No breathing loud. NO YELLING (we could all hear the capital letters).  We go one at a time. Do not cross tracks with anyone. Turn on your PIEPS right now. Do as I do. Because if you don’t and the avalanche doesn’t kill us, I will kill you.” Best skiing of my life.

He showed us how to find safe snow by looking for crusty fields. If we found one we kept looking for fluff. He would break a piece of it off of the rest to show us how not to be fooled by its looks. He did a lot of teaching by showing, not talking, following his own advice. This more than his lectures impressed on me how truly dangerous our situation was.

He was using objects and scenes from our environment to teach us how to stay alive and have fun in a place only a few people ever go to, the back country of the Rockies. He showed us how to use our telescoping ski poles to look for buried friends in a crosshatch pattern to cover ground efficiently. He showed us how to dig our mouths out first to help us breath. He showed us how to dig safely around a person so as not to skewer them with a shovel. It was an experience that I drank every moment of with the knowledge that I would remember it forever. Somehow the danger of it all made it far more interesting.

The only way that it could have been even more epic was if there had actually been an avalanche that we were not caught in. Though I have since seen my share of them, I still for some reason wish that there had been one that day, just to help Tod make his point.