Category: June 2022

Why should videos supplement and drive learning?

As a preteen and into my teens, I became obsessed with science. For example, when I came home from school I turned on some of my favorite 90’s shows: Bill Nye the Science Guy or Beekman’s World. If you haven’t watched either of those shows, they both taught science concepts in a silly, fast-moving format with skits, experiments, costumes, and – most importantly – big questions. To be honest, I think the big questions pulled me toward science TV. That is, it was fun to watch a show and test out the experiments myself because they always led to more questions and tests, which led to more questions and tests, and so on.

Humans are born asking questions. Unfortunately, over time traditional schooling leads to a decrease in the ability of children to ask big questions and think creatively. In a test for divergent thinking, 98% of Kindergarten students scored at genius level (Stephenson & Park, 2010). Five years later, only 50% of these same students scored at genius level (Stephenson & Park, 2010). After another 5 years, only a handful of the same students scored at genius level (Stephenson & Park, 2010).  We all have the capacity for divergent thinking, but over time it mostly deteriorates (Stephenson & Park, 2010).

Photo by William Bayreuther on Unsplash

The constructivist theory posits that students build their own knowledge and skills. That is, “student questions are the seeds of real learning” (Musallam, 2013). “If we have the guts to confuse our students, perplex them, and evoke real questions, through those questions we can tailor robust and informed methods of blended instruction” (Musallam, 2013). In what way does video learning allow for self-guided learning? Using videos, learners have the opportunity to watch at their own time pace. They can pause and repeat and review the information that they forget (Khan, 2011). This self-paced instruction, combined with good video quality, gives learners a “natural high and good mood” (Khan, 2011). Why wouldn’t we use videos in the classroom?

How might video play a role in this process?

In his TED Talk Let’s Use Video to Reinvent Education, Sal Khan (2011) uses a bicycle analogy to describe the industrial model of education. He says that current learning is like giving a kid a bike and lecturing them on how to use it. Then, you come back in two weeks to see how they did. Finally, you mark them with a grade and move on to the next topic: A unicycle. Khan (2011) says that this explains the “swiss cheese gaps that kept building throughout their foundation.” What if we taught kids to learn the way we actually teach them to ride a bike? That is, learners would stay on the bicycle, fall off, and get back on until they have mastery (Khan, 2011). Our current model penalizes failure but doesn’t expect mastery (Khan, 2011). In contrast, the new model encourages failure and expects mastery (Khan, 2011).

What does it look like in action?

I remember the first time I used self-created videos. I had about an hour before class and I wasn’t feeling well. As I perused my lesson plans for the day, I realized I was set to lecture all day. It’s no surprise that I didn’t want to stand up front and lecture kids about how to create a graph, so I filmed my instructions. During class, students watched the video and worked at their own pace to create graphs. Then, I could support them one-on-one and they could support one another. 

Another time I recorded a video to explain the directions when I had a substitute. Both of these examples demonstrate teacher-centered lessons. Eventually, I facilitated student-created projects using videos such as this: Student Work: Movie Magic!

When I transitioned to teaching adult learners, I used video in very different ways. For example, I shared videos on social media and in help desk articles with specific, new, or common processes. I also created intentional playlists in Canvas courses. The best part about Canvas courses are the video quizzes: Videos with questions embedded throughout. The most important way that I use video with adult learners is to communicate the “Why” of projects that the technology department implements. 

What resources do I use?

Because I have a Mac, I use the following resources:

• QuickTime – I use this for screen and video recording.
• Keynote – I use this to create gifs that I can insert into my iMovie. I also use it for green screen 
• iMovie – I use this to edit my movie and sound.
• YouTube – This product is obviously not just for Macs. To me, YouTube is the most efficient place to store and share videos I create.

Resources I want to try:

• Snagit – A different resource made specifically for recording eLearning videos.
• Camtasia – Another resource made specifically for editing eLearning videos.

According to Visual Content Marketing Statistics You Should Know in 2022, (Mawhinney, 2021) the current optimal video length is 2-5 minutes. Already, I believe this statistic to be incorrect. As social media continues to expand its capabilities, we see the length of content creation decrease. For example, TikTok is known for videos that are 15 seconds long and only recently allowed for three-minute videos. As this trend infiltrates the educational arena, I plan to incorporate training videos that are less than a minute or even use gifs to communicate new content. This trend, known as microlearning, is an easy way to grab the attention of often-overworked adult learners.

What trends do you see regarding the use of video in student or adult learning?

References

Khan, S. (2011). Sal Khan: Let’s Use Video to Reinvent Education. TED. Retrieved June 18, 2022, from https://www.ted.com/talks/sal_khan_let_s_use_video_to_reinvent_education

Mawhinney, J. (2021, February 16). 50 Visual Content Marketing Statistics You Should Know in 2022. HubSpot Blog. Retrieved June 18, 2022, from http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/visual-content-marketing-strategy#sm.0000mii153ssger9tr21v4eh2jwhh

Musallam, R. (2013, May 8). Ramsey Musallam: 3 Rules to Spark Learning. TED. Retrieved June 18, 2022, from https://www.ted.com/talks/ramsey_musallam_3_rules_to_spark_learning

Stephenson, A., & Park, A. (2010, October 14). RSA Animate: Changing Education Paradigms. YouTube. Retrieved June 18, 2022, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U

Blended Learning

Throughout the coursework in the ADL program, I’ve discovered many iterations of a significant learning environment. For example, in Blended: Using Disruptive Innovation to Improve Schools, Horn and Staker (2014) provide four models for blended learning. These models include rotation, flex, self-blended, and enriched-virtual models. Furthermore, within the rotation model Horn and Staker (2014) present four more models: Station-rotation, lab-rotation, flipped-classroom, and individual-rotation models. Each of these sub-models presents an easy way to create a blended environment in a traditional school environment.

The Cloud

In his TED Talk Build a School in the Cloud, Mitra (2013) paints a picture of students who use a computer to teach themselves. Through collaboration and encouragement, these students could learn concepts far above normal grade-level expectations in spite of the fact that they were learning in a different language. There are so many ways to provide choice, ownership, and voice through authentic environments, and traditional school has barely scraped the surface.

Multi-faceted Approach

From a teaching perspective, there are also many ways to provide significant learning environments to learners. Through my innovation project, Paperless Office, Paperless District (Stateler, 2021), I propose a top-down model of an office environment to “digitize paper processes and streamline current digital processes.” I have colleagues who plan to incorporate other pieces of blended learning, such as ePortfolios, micro-credentialing, maker spaces, and more.

It’s no Secret that School isn’t Meeting our Needs

The RSA Animate: Changing Education Paradigms (Stephenson & Park, 2010) reminds us again that school, as it is, models the interests and image of industrialization. Specifically, this includes the production line, bells, batching students, schedules, conformity, and standardization. To illustrate this, I’ve written several blogs about our education system not working in a way to support our unknown future or current student population:

Square Pegs in Round Holes – From the Industrial Model to a Global Ecosystem

From Cog to Metacognition: My Story

Seeking a Brave New Mindset

As Stephenson and Park (2010) continue their thoughts, they say that we need to meet our students’ unknown future, we need to move in the opposite direction of our industrial model. This is the only way we can build our student’s capacity for divergent thinking and creativity. In order to do this, we have to “think differently about human capacity,” by moving away from fixed-mindset labels (Stephenson & Park, 2010). We must also encourage collaboration over competition. Finally, we must break the habits of the institution. Only then can we move away from this system that is no longer serving our needs as a community.

Good Ideas rely on Collaboration

Most great ideas happen in groups. Steven Johnson (2010) outlines the slow process of idea combinations through collaboration:

1. Slow hunches: Breakthrough ideas almost never come in a sudden stroke of innovation. On the contrary, they spend a long time dormant in the background. Good ideas are the collision of smaller hunches (Johnson, 2010).
2. The need to “collide with other hunches” and we should “create systems to allow hunches to come together and create something bigger than the sum of their parts” (Johnson, 2010).
3. Good ideas increase through connectivity. In fact, the evolution and innovation of technology and science increased rapidly as globalization has come to fruition (Johnson, 2010). We need one another to “find the missing pieces to complete the idea we’re working on” (Johnson, 2010).

In the Spirit of Collaboration

Collaboration also includes sharing ideas. We are in a unique period of change and information overload. While it may seem distracting and overwhelming, if we can create a space to connect and time to reflect in significant learning environments, we can combat the overload. One method of connecting includes reading and publishing journal articles. As I consider the path I want to take, I recognize that my smaller peer group and I will probably publish together. However, as I think through the options individually, these are my top choices:

• Home School Researcher Journal
• Homeschooling Today

Why: Homeschooling isn’t bound by the same structure and rules that education systems are bound by. There is much more freedom to experiment with blended learning, cloud computing, and significant environments.

• ASCD

Why: This is almost the exact opposite of the first two I chose. That is to say, it is a very well-known organization. To be honest, I actually even belonged to ASCD in the past!

• eLearning Magazine

Why: Their readership includes instructional designers, educators corporate trainers, and managers. In addition, their readers know that eLearning is a growing and interesting field. This might be the best choice for my small team since we all teach adult learners.

• Your Turn: Write for Us | Edutopia

Why: Accessibility for all! Edutopia is a free resource, so our article would be free to read.

What is your plan?

References

Horn, M. B., Staker, H., & Christensen, C. M. (2014). Blended: Using Disruptive Innovation to Improve Schools. Wiley.

Johnson, S. (2010, September 17). Where Good Ideas Come From by Steven Johnson. YouTube. Retrieved June 10, 2022, from https://youtu.be/NugRZGDbPFU

Mitra, S. (2013, February 27). Sugata Mitra: Build a School in the Cloud. YouTube. Retrieved June 10, 2022, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3jYVe1RGaU

Paperless Office, Paperless District. (2021, October). Karin Stateler, Cookies ‘N Cache. https://karinstateler.com/?page_id=95Stephenson, A., & Park, A. (2010, October 14). RSA Animate: Changing Education Paradigms. YouTube. Retrieved June 10, 2022, from https://youtu.be/zDZFcDGpL4U

“Do one small thing every day” (Dobrowolski, 2015).

I believe that every action I do leads me toward the next chapter, job, or experience in my life. While I live with intentionality, sometimes when dreams don’t come to fruition immediately it’s hard to know if you’re doing the right thing. Because of this, I like to think of my actions as tiny shifts in the right direction that “magically” lead me toward my ideal future. In her TED Talk Draw Your Future – Take Control of Your Life, Patti Dobrowolski (2015) provides a roadmap to be more intentional and less “magical”.

First, she talks about the importance of a visual representation of your future. She suggests drawing a picture of your current situation. Then, she says to freely dream: “Draw where you want to be” (Dobrowolski, 2015). Make sure to “soak it in,” “fill it with color and emotion,” and “get inside of it” (Dobrowolski, 2015). Finally, Dobrowsolski (2015) encourages listening to your intuition to execute your plan by asking yourself “What is the boldest thing I can do to get from here to there?”

What if we took this concept and applied it to trends in educational technology?

In his TED Talk Build a School in the Cloud, Sugata Mitra (2013) asks “Where did the kind of learning we do in schools come from?” He describes the global information economy from 300 years ago that was dependent on handwritten data and ships. He calls this the “bureaucratic administrative machine” and recounts that “to have that machine running, you need a lot of people” (Mitra, 2013). Consequently, the machine to produce those people became the foundation for schools today. After all, schools needed to produce people who had good handwriting, who could read, and who were capable of simple mental math (Mitra, 2013).

This is the picture of where we are now in education. Sadly, not much about our educational system has changed in the past 300 years in spite of massive technological advancement and connectedness. We are “continuously producing identical people for a machine that no longer exists” (Mitra, 2013). We are bound by high-stakes testing and limitations (laws) on the way schools are “allowed” to run.

What might the future hold for the cloud in educational technology?

Mitra (2013) described the future of learning in which children all over the world tap into wonder and the ability to work together through school in the cloud. He said that encouragement is the key (Mitra, 2013).  Whereas threats shut down the brain, encouragement can “shift the balance from threat to pleasure” (Mitra, 2013). To achieve this, particularly in remote and impoverished areas, Mitra suggests taking advantage of the Cloud. Through encouragement and collaboration, we might achieve collective, constructivist knowledge equity.

Defining the cloud: Infrastructure

” ’The cloud’ refers to servers that are accessed over the Internet, and the software and databases that run on those servers” (Cloudflare, n.d.). “The cloud enables users to access the same files and applications from almost any device, because the computing and storage take place on servers in a data center, instead of locally on the user device” (Cloudflare, n.d.). However, in reference to education, the cloud is more than just hardware and databases. The cloud is also the collective knowing and ever-changing body of information gained through the wisdom of crowds.

Defining the cloud: Pedagogy

In Collaborative Cloud: A New Model for e-Learning, Liao, et al. (2014, p. 341-342) outlined a model of e-learning in the Cloud with a focus on pedagogy over hardware and software:

1. Embrace a wide range of resources. This includes infrastructure and human resources. Collaborators include students, instructors, and TAs. Then, restructure the roles of all people. For example, students with high grades tutor students with low grades. 
2. Include learning support like tutorials and discussions as a service. This is more important than materials.
3. The typical cloud could be based on how much time and the number of resources each supplier has. The collaborative learning cloud should depend on the information about each collaborator’s knowledge structure and status. Institutions could leverage AI to determine this!
4. Marketplace rules can stimulate Ss’ participation and better dispatch virtual resources among collaborators.
5. Collaborative cloud learning pushes boundaries. It challenges the existing curriculum and grading system. Therefore, more collaborators mean more available resources and services.

“By applying the knowledge modeling technique and the economic model of the free market in the collaborative learning cloud, virtual resources can be dispatched in the most reasonable and effective way. This design alleviates the tension between limited instructional resources and too many learning support demands” (Liao et al., 2014, p. 349).

How I went from the cloud as an infrastructure to the cloud as a pedagogical tool.

I remember the first time I used Google asynchronously. At this point, I used it with my mom and sister to plan our meals and supplies for a family vacation. You see, my mom and sister live in Michigan, I am in Texas, and we were meeting in Oklahoma. We wanted to plan who would bring what, what we would eat, etc.

It was August 2012 and my mom didn’t really know how to use Google Docs. For example, she didn’t know that it saved automatically in a remote location or that it was collaborative. Because of this, I made sure to include directions on how to use Docs.

The first time I used google docs in my class was truly in a low-tech manner.  In 2016, I used Docs instead of a whiteboard to display the lesson. This was a very teacher-centered and simple example, though it was easy to update on the fly when plans changed. Next, I promptly moved to a google slide that was interactive. Students had access, and I included hyperlinks so they could access curated resources. It was slightly less teacher-centered and also more complex than my original use. This example shows how I used Google Slides to guide my students’ learning: Slide Example. Then, in 2019 I started to use a Google Site to communicate with students. It was one-way communication, unlike an LMS like Canvas or Google Classroom.

Finally, post-COVID I used Google Slides to facilitate synchronous and asynchronous student work that was student-centered and complex, though it still required more teacher facilitation than a blended environment. Here is an example of an activity to review editing and revision with 6th-grade learners: 6th P: Edit and Revise

Now that I teach adult learners in a post-COVID world, I employ blended environments and curate resources with learner-centered outcomes. I also use so many more aspects of Google Workspace, including Drawings, Docs, Sites, Slides, and more!

Through this grad school work, my goal is to “draw” a picture of a future that uses technology to enhance pedagogy.

What might that intentional image – the dream – look like for me and the lives I touch?

References

Cloudflare. (n.d.). What is the cloud? | Cloud definition. Cloudflare. Retrieved June 6, 2022, from https://www.cloudflare.com/learning/cloud/what-is-the-cloud/

Dobrowolski, P. (2015, March 27). Best Ted Talks 2015 – Draw your future – Take control of your life. YouTube. Retrieved June 5, 2022, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vl6wCiUZYc

Liao, J., Wang, M., Ran, W., & Yang, S. J. H. (2014). Collaborative Cloud: A New Model for e-Learning. Innovations in Education and Teaching International, 51(3), 338-351. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14703297.2013.791554Mitra, S. (2013, February 27). Sugata Mitra: Build a School in the Cloud. YouTube. Retrieved June 5, 2022, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3jYVe1RGaU