September 26th, 2023
On pods and brainstorms:
Today’s class was interesting! We got into our pods which was cool! I managed to find a group where most of us were focusing on something music-related in for our inquiry blog posts. It was really good to start brainstorming what kind of ed. tech. resource we would focus on for our inquiry presentations down the road.
On the lecture:
After the initial brainstorming session, we talked a bit about how to design multi-media resources to be as engaging as possible for students; we watched a video on how to best present information which was somewhat interesting, but the guy who made the video seemed to violate his own rules. It was a little hypocritical, but hey, it was a great demonstration of what not to do I guess! Some things I learned a bit about is that words (text or verbal) are better when relevant visuals or imagery is supplemented. One thing that stood out and makes sense given my own personal experiences was the “principal of redundancy” which essentially says that when the exact same information is repeated too much – even in different modes – it can be counterproductive to learning. For instance, a teacher showing a slide show with text explaining a concept and reading verbatim from the lecture slides.
On the educational technology of the week:
I’m looking forward to playing around with Screencastify and Canva to see what kinds of additional modes I can bring to my future blog posts and maybe reflections.