Edging Ahead…

Authoring for Educators – Final Assignment

While this course has ostensibly been about “authoring” digital learning materials, in the end, I decided to concentrate on alternative c. from the final assignment.

c. communicate relevant information and ideas effectively to students, parents, and peers using a variety of digital-age media and formats.

After experimenting with a number of new (to me) and relatively unfamiliar digital authoring tools during the course, ultimately, this project needed to be  both practical and applicable to current objectives for the Main Library program.

At this time, we are concentrating on awareness of existing materials and services  with both students and teachers. In order to reach the widest possible audience of both, then, broader use of digital information presentation tools is called for. To this end, we are ramping up use of live media links of several types in our Main Library HS and MS Blogs which are set as the browser entry point for all students launching a browser in Main Library.

Using a blog as the library front-end has a number of advantages over using a homepage. To begin with, blogging platforms include the built-in theme and widget features which allow those with limited digital skills or time to assemble a reasonablly attractive page. Secondly, the blogging platform is easy to edit and to maintain a series of quick, relevant informational postings. Finally, the blogging platform has become relatively standardized, so that even users unfamiliar with this particular page can navigate relatively intuitively through it.

While exploration of digital authoring tools has been a worthwhile and engaging sidebar to the last six weeks, in the end, the important thing has been to select the most appropriate tools for the task at hand. Book trailers sponsored by media companies and made by professionals are effective at both promoting interest in new or underused titles in our collection and at presenting a model of effective promotion for students interested in trying it out themselves. the other tools used in our blogs have similar dual uses, and we will continue to try new options as we expand our exploration of this new digital landscape.

How would screencasts be used in your classroom/department?

It may seem a no-brainer that the library environment lends itself naturally to using “how-to” videos. With the range of materials, databases, information systems and production services available through the library, simple “How-to” videos featuring  narrated screen capture of everything from the library catalog to setting up an RSS feed from a research database might seem to be logical uses of the technology.

The question is, “If we build it, will they come?”

The answer, I fear, is simply, without prevarication, “No. It’s just not that easy…”

The May 2009 OCLC report on library catalog usage suggested that students today want, to paraphrase, things to be Quick, to be Easy, and to be Relevant to their needs of the moment.

What single tool best meets this requirement today? Google, of course. Want a quick answer to who directed the 1968 Hollywood Romeo and Juliet? Google it. Need to know how to insert a complex formula into an Excel spreadsheet? Google it – and perhaps add “YouTube” if you want to see an instructional video on the exact topic.

The same question serves for every Helpfile, User tutorial and TechHelp access feature already built into each of the technology offerings in our library. As librarians, we seldom (never seems almost closer to the reality) see users (student OR teacher) navigating of their own volition to  Help features. How much easier it is, in our service-oriented system, for a student to simply ask the first person at hand, “How do I make a color copy?” or a teacher to just email the query “Do you have the Brannagh Hamlet?” (or perhaps a slightly more challenging, “Can you find critlit sources for the poetry of Michael Ondaatje?”)

Sounds pretty grim for the future of independent researching – but it’s not all bad. Screencasts seem to be a natural for promoting those  things users are already engaged with. Our student “front-end”, the page that automatically opens when a student launches a browser, is a blog, which should lend itself naturally to a screencast implementation.

We’ll start where the kids aleady are, or where they might conceivably go without the extrnal stimulus of classroom assignments or teacher-directed library use. Some possibilities include:

• Book Reviews by Students
• Book Reviews by teachers or professional reviewers
• Book Trailers from the industry (Scholastic,
• Movie Reviews of books

If you can’t beat ‘em…

Project Title: Effective Discussion Behavior
     Project Team:
           Member 1: HS ESL Department Head
           Member 2: HS Modern Languages Mandarin Teacher
           Member 3: HS Librarian

Project Parameters: 20 minute team planning period (before lunch) and a 2 hour production period, followed by group presentations of results. With our disparate team makeup  and collaborative project topic,  our goal was also to complete the project (aside from individual reflections) in the f2f session.

Blog Assignment: Upload the completed project. Reflect on the process of creating the digital story. How could digital storytelling be used in your classroom/subject area.

During the 20-minute planning period we learned that the ESL department had handwritten notes in hand for a planned discussion of “Effective Discussion Behavior” and since each of us engage in some form of “storytelling” in our disciplines, we decided we could build a shared presentation/project using available digital tools.

We then used a FlipVideo camera to grab clips of discussions in progress. We downloaded the ensuing 21 clips and individually assessed them (MP4 files played directly in  Windows Media Player) to see which might illustrate elements of effective discussion identified in the ESL notes. 

Comparing notes, we agreed that eight of the 21 clips effectively illustrated one of the core elements of effective discussion behavior. These elements were;

1. Plan for Discussion (read: Topic of Discussion or problem to be resolved)
2. Putting plans into (immediate) action
3. Practicing Active Listening
4. Actively Participating
5. Attending Fully
6. Paraphrasing
7. Enunciating Clearly (my paraphrasing) with Appropriate Body Language
8. Offering a Solution

With the ESL plan in hand and the demonstration clips selected, the project needed only be assembled in a stand-alone presentation format. We decided to use Smart Recorder to capture screencasts of the relevant demonstration clips, interspersed with title frames of the core discussion elements done in Powerpoint, possibly backed up by an Audicity soundtrack. All three team members were quite comfortable with Powerpoint, somewhat familiar with Audacity, largely unfamiliar with Smart Recorder, and totally new to the FlipVideo Camera.

Result:
With the written plans in hand, the 8 relevant clips isolated and titling a simple task using Powerpoint, assembling the items seemed doable in the allotted time. We quickly found, however, that the tools we had chosen were limiting in several ways, at least for our novice production team:

• FlipVideo camera default appears to be 15 fps, resulting in herky-jerky pans rendering several clips unuseable. We did not have time to investigate 30 fps options and reshoot.
• Sound capture with the FlipVideo cameras included a high level of background noise on most clips. We had only our “one-take” footage to work with.
• Running Full-screen titling slides from Powerpoint hid the Smart Recorder controls, which meant that we had to capture Powerpoint titling in Slide Sorter mode, resulting in extraneous visual elements. (Windows Toolbars, Smart Recorder Controls, etc)
• Smart Recorder Controls are simple but slow. Our “quick & dirty” recording method was to play the WMP clip, then hit Record on Smart Recorder.
• Smart Recording from a playing WMP file appears to have been not very “smart”. The resulting Smart Recording of our project included the following features making it unuseable for instruction or presentation;
  o Transitions between title and subtitle frames and video are unacceptably choppy
  o Image quality of the captured WMP playout is unacceptable due to
          * Dropped video frames resulting in “Keystone-Kops”-like movement
          * Video frames have a “solarized” appearance suggesting incomplete capture
  o Audio frames are either dropped or chopped, resulting in illegible or no sound
  o Transitions between silent Powerpoint Headers and random-sound WMP playout is jarring

What did we learn (or relearn) from this exercise? We learned that;

• Digital production tools must be selected with the same care for desired outcomes that any teaching/learning tools must be chosen.
• Digital production tools, even of the “plug ‘n play” variety, demand expertise in their use in order to be used effectively.
• The time necessary to develop expertise in the use of any of the digital tools presented in this course is beyond the scope of the course.
• It is clearly not “best practice” to simply use digital tools because they are available, if a better tool is already available. In the case of this project, promoting effective discussion would probably be better done using realtime discussion on topics of interest to the target audience.

How could digital storytelling be used in my classroom/subject area?

Although this particular project would, by most standards, be judged a practical failure, as a HS librarian, I see digital storytelling as having major potential for;

• Appealing to students to get involved with the library, its programs and the selection of materials, resources and services it offers
• Creating awareness of ranges of services and materials available in the library
• Developing  awareness of alternative genres (students tend to stay within a reading “zone of comfort”) for independent reading
• Introducing new materials, systems or services in the library
• Promoting interest in and circulation of new titles (and old standards)
• Reviewing Research Skills in a novel and interesting way

Now – if we can just get our hands on a “Round Tuitt”…

Yes, I’m guilty. Of course I am. I’ve bored more people with text-heavy bulleted presentations than anybody should ever have to admit to. But I  was just doing what every kid with a new toy  does. I was trying it on to see what it could do.

I was lucky enough to have Kim Cofino mention “Presentation Zen” to me a year ago when I was working on a proposal for our regional teachers’ conference.   I wasn’t quite ready then to abandon all my work in the name of getting my message out in that dramatic, but Spartan, by my “old” standards, style.  Luckily, my presentation wasn’t selected for the conference, so no one was ever subjected to that last-gasp 20th-century blow-out.

But I’m learning. The message of that presentation was important to me, so I went back in the spring and took another look at it to see what could be salvaged. I found some heartening things through applying some of the principles of “Presentation Zen” as I now understand them.

1) I was able to improve it 100% by simply stripping out the background Theme. What a simple concept! As soon as I saw my images highlighted on that featureless black background, I was hooked. No more “wind over Paris spring” themes for me…

2) I had tried to open with a snapshot of a looming environmental train-wreck, to tie this to a personal life-story paralleling the evolution of the environmental one, and then to use the converging storylines to pitch my own speculative fiction novel, Mai Shangri-La. the result included WAY too many competing messages. Each deserved its own vehicle.

3) In spite of my legacy bulleted style, I found that each slide had a core element that I could keep. By “unpacking” the multilayered images, I could expand one slide into several much simpler ones, all of which could impart their own unique message.

4) Without some of the excess wording, individual slides took on a new vibrancy that thrilled me. So a slide which had packed in a dozen cascading images and a series of expanding bullets became a series of individual slides with one or two words each.

I tried unsuccessfully to export a sample to PDF to display here, but uploads keep failing, so I’m bailing on this and moving on. Trust me, that the new, leaner Powerpoint was a dramatic improvement over the old. Now if I could just become so facile with a blogging platform… :0(

…but leaving it at that was really not very satisfying, so I finally ate crow and went to Dennis, my Divisional TRC (Technology Resource Coordinator), and learned a valuable lesson to buttress my learning about Presentation Zen – and basic Powerpoint use ;0) And the lesson is…USE the resources available to you, including the services of people who’s job it is to support you. It will save a LOT of time and frustration.  Thanks, Dennis.

Here’s a JPEG of just ONE of the original slides from the “Pre-Zen” Presentation (47 slides, all Packed out with words, cascading images, transitions (although I had already learned to pare these down to a single image and slide transition) and sound (thankfully, no typewriter clacks or machine-gun yammer, but still an overpowering background music dominating many of the slides)

And here’s the “kicker” slide from the new presentation (the new Presentation took that SINGLE original slide and “unpacked” it to present just one of the many messages in the original.)

"Fill" for a Future Housing Development on the outskirts of Bangkok. Normal?...

SUNY EDC 604: Visual Literacy: Effective Communicators and Creators

“Write a reflective blog post on how the courses to date in this program have changed your teaching for the new year.

This blog has languished since the end of the last SUNY course at ISB in May, and now I have to conclude that frankly, the two SUNY courses we completed last year have NOT changed my teaching for this year.

I’ve been asking myself why – even before this question became a course assignment. It’s not that I’m not interested in helping kids “achieve their academic potential”.  It’s not that I’ve lost sight of ISB’s mission to foster “passionate, reflective learners”. It’s not that I’ve given up on our collective goal to help develop kids into “caring, global citizens”. And it’s not that the courses, in of themselves, weren’t  engaging, informative, and fruitful in terms of raising my awareness of new tools and technologies available to me and my students.

So what is it? In a nutshell, it’s a growing sense of impending doom; a feeling that we’re being overwhelmed; and not on the technological front, although certainly it’s become increasingly difficult to keep up with the weekly round of enhancements to online database interfaces, electronic book readers, all-in-one USB devices and “i-everything”.  Instead, this fall, I am overwhelmed by the following;

• I am concerned about the resignation to the inevitable I’m seeing in  my immediate “sphere of concern”.  At the beach that I could once keep reasonably clean by picking up two bags of trash each visit, I now find four to be the norm.  In my small off-campus housing development, rats have become new and unwelcome residents and I feel alone in fighting their encroachment.  I’ve given up trying to maintain on my own a small public park space at the entrance, and it has now become a rampant, weed-choked jungle.
• I am dismayed by the escalation of disregard I am seeing for the larger local environment. I live 20 minutes from this tiny western school enclave, and in my daily commute (by SUV!), I see streets becoming ever more congested and garbage-strewn, roadsides becoming defacto waste-dumps, and once pristine rice-paddies being paved over with first a meter of household garbage (pix to prove it), then a meter of fertile topsoil that should be growing a crop, and finally, two stories of glass and concrete that I fear will become Thailand’s Love Canal.
• I am staggered by the sheer global scale of irreparable damage to the environment I see perpetrated in support  of “business as usual” . We need to maintain “BAU” to support our insatiable demand for superfluous consumer products, unnecessary technology-laden “infomedia” capabilities  and an inappropriat global jet-setting lifestyle. A recent report by the BC Forest Service in Canada projects by within 10 years, the Pine-Beetle infestation will have destroyed 71% of all extant BC Pine Forests. That will bring about shocking changes in the appearance, climate and economic viability of Canada’s richest province.
• I am appalled at the scope of change sweeping the planet as a result of the above, from the speed of arctic sea-ice melt (a trend that’s, thankfully reversed slightly in 2009)  to the routine collapse of Antarctic ice-shelves, to the inexorable upward creep of atmospheric CO2.

Read James Howard Kunstler’s “The Long Emergency” (this link to the Rolling Stone article, but we have two copies of the book in ML) and consider how prescient he seems now to have been so far. Read his new novel “World Made by Hand” and consider what’s going to be important if his vision of America in 20 years turns out to be even partly true.

Then ask yourself, “How can I best help students achieve to their academic potential, become passionate learners, and prepare them to be caring, global citizens in a world which might not have functioning electricity or adequate freshwater – even at their soci0-economic level?”

Should I continue to obsess about flavor-of-the-week technological wizardry, or should I concentrate on rubber-meets-road learning skills that will transcend “the long emergency”,  when being able to learn, from a technology not dependent on electricity, how to purify unsafe drinking water, will be a skill more prized than knowing how to assemble a cloud-based mashup of irrelevant extrivianza?

I haven’t changed much about how I’m teaching this fall – except the time-frame within which I’m placing it.  I’m trying to keep my finger on the pulse of new technologies for information seeking and learning, but I’m concentrating on personal connections, practical learnings and transferrable skills that I can impart regarding the already rich array of tools available to our students.

This places me squarely in the left-hand column of Greg Craven’s Magic Grid Machine if you were to exchange his “Significant action now” and “Little or No action”  to combat climate change with “Hedge your bets with traditional vs. technological learning tools” and “Put all your eggs in the technology basket”.

Whether global warming is going to lead to uncontrolled and irreversible climate change is still, unfortunately, a matter of debate (albeit mostly from “outlier” opinion-leaders).  But using Craven’s irrefutable logic, I’ll fight to preserve the best of the past while critically examining, and implementing where it proves really useful,  technology’s promise for the future.  We’ve already made huge changes in the way we do business in our Main Library from 5 years ago.  This year we’ll concentrate on fine-tuning those rather than introducing a host of yet newer experiments in learning.