Shelly Terrell re-labels tasks in her blended learning spaces "missions". Each week in this course has a mission, should you decide to accept it.
This week participants were to create a blog post or web page or poster that uses some of the multimedia tools identified to attractively design something graphically about you, in a collage or video or combination of media, such as
who you are
where you live and / or work
about your daily routine
something you are interested in
your dreams and / or fantasies (art)
anything of your choice
Tools covered
Many of the tools needed are listed and linked to where they were described in the workshops in Thailand, here in Schoology:
For the benefit of those who can't access Schoology, these tools are listed below.
Participants should familiarize themselves with any of the tools they think
might help them complete their missions in this course
or might help them in designing their own blended learnng environments
and ask questions in at the regularly scheduled synchronous meetings, or at Yo!Teach, or in the Schoology forums about any of these tools they don't understand or need help with installing or utilizing.
Here are a few of the tools I use to create my own blended learning spaces
I put a lot of my projects on PBworks pages
I use Google tools: Slides, Docs, Photos
Jing is my favorite screen capture tool
I make video tutorials using Screencast-o-matic and Zoom
I upload my tutorials to YouTube and Vimeo
Tools covered in the EL Specialist Workshops in Thailand in January 2020 and follow up e-learning spaces
These are the tools I covered in my Workshops 2020
When I came across this infographic I thought I would share it as yet another example of the KIND of thing (genre, not quality) that participants could attempt to create using some of the digital tools mentioned at http://workshops2020.pbworks.com/w/page/137978502/Model_Teacher_Unit_2.
In fulfillment of your mission for the week, you could create something along these lines, but much simpler, with Google Slides or PowerPoint and a screen capture tool (conveying your own message of course). I wouldn't expect something with this much complexity, but the relationship to the course of this example is obvious.
This year's 5-week EVO sessions had just ended as we started this course, and one of the moderators passed us this video from one of her participants who used Screencast-o-matic to express her appreciation for the learning experience and to explain what it was like to learn in a community of peers who worked to scaffold one another.
This 2 minute video is a good example of a digital video production about oneself. It is attractive in design and powerful in message, but it could be improved. With Screencast-o-matic you have the option of showing your webcam either large or tiny in one corner while you speak. You can share what is on your computer so you can queue web pages in a browser and change tabs if you want to take your audience on a web tour, or have videos playing and show those, or show a PowerPoint ... so many possibilities.
Screencast-o-matic does not let you play computer audio in the free version, only your mic audio, but with Zoom you can achieve a similar effect and have both. These are easy tools to use and once you have played with them it might occur to you how you can use them to create teaching materials, and with Zoom, even connect your class to other students or outside experts.
I wanted to show you this simple example of a digital artifact produced by a participant in one of the EVO sessions just ended, but my beautiful assistant Bobbi and I have also produced an example of what is possible.
The video above is more elegant, but ours is ... well .. you can judge, emulate if you wish, or invent another genre.
Hero's list: Participant success stories
We had our first submission on Feb 25, out of the 40 participants registered in the Schoology course.
I had trouble at first opening the file because I was trying to open it in Google Drive, which was offering me third party apps to open it there, but when I finally just downloaded it to my computer, it opened fine there, and I am able to play it. I've asked Ti if I can upload it here and in Schoology, so that I can embed it, as a better way to make it easy for students and course participants to access it over the web.
Another way to do that is to upload it to YouTube or to Vimeo and let us embed from there. I like Vimeo for things associated with classes I teach because it keeps this kind of material off the Google / YouTube social network nexus.
At first I thought Ti was addressing us as peers in her Blended Learning Classrooms course, but then I realized that this video was meant for her real students. Ti's school has ordered all classes to go online temporarily to minimize risk of coronavirus outbreak that might be aggravated if students meet face-to-face in the school there. This appears to have happened in the critical first week of school, so Ti's video is addressed to her real students, in preparation for some indefinite period when she will be delivering her course online.
In 7 minutes, she introduces herself to her students and invites them to make friends with her in FB if they wish, but suggests they follow her on Twitter, https://twitter.com/titirutr. Twitter is where she prefers to interact with her students, and she uses it as her class window on the world, which she thinks is more fun than working only through prescribed materials. So she uses both Twitter and Google drive to teach her listening classes and in the video she shows her students where to find their course documents mounted in a Google shared Drive. She hasn't met her students yet, so she walks through the documents most important to them, e.g. how they can check if their names are in her class lists (so they can ensure that they have a 'seat' in the exam rooms, so they can be graded). Midterms cover units 1 to 4, so she shows them where to find those materials, where they can find the listenings, scripts for the listening, and a pdf copy of the book they are all supposed to have, in case they lose the one they were given. She says she will also be using Google Classroom but she "might move into some other stuff that I'm going to be discovering pretty soon in my blended course that I'm taking right now." Indeed!
Sharon Graham
Sharon Graham from Texas / China / Kansas has just sumitted a very slick presentation in Screecast-o-matic which appears to be hosted on the provider's website, https://screencast-o-matic.com/watch/cYnT3swMwE
She said she had used Screecast-o-matic before, but not its web cam, which she skillfully changed from full-screen to corner thumbnail and back again during her presentation. She also experimented with Google Slides and included some screen shots made with Jing. All in all a very nice presentation, nicely timed in around 5 minutes.
Jane Chien
Jane Chien produced as her "digital poster" a blog post here https://chienjane.com/; or specifically
She wrote in her post that it was "In partial fulfillment of the required tasks from taking part in an online blended learning workshop provided by English Language Specialist Vance Stevens, I’d like to share the way I conducted Freshmen English course using google classroom and New York Times “The Learning Network.” No, I did not use a textbook for my class. I had my students subscribe to NYtimes for 4 dollars a month because I wanted my students to read the most current issues and write comments at the bottom of the news articles for real readers. They read other people’s comments and they knew they were writing with other readers in mind, instead of just writing for the sake of submitting assignments for me."
I commented on this post:
I like your teaching style. Who ever came up with the idea that we were supposed to teach, anyway. The key is to create learning environments where students (in fact, fellow learners) will want to learn. The notion of teaching just passes the responsibility for that onto the sage on the stage. If that ever happens, step aside and get out of the way. Learners coming through. Encourage them 🙂
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