Dr. Barrett's (n.d.) webpage presents an introduction to the types of ePortfolios in a learner-centered approach. The website requires cognitive activity and capitalizes on the use of multimedia to present the essential content; and it does so following instructional design principles as recommended by Mayer (2009). Beginning with an anticipatory set to activate the learner's prior knowledge, the lesson page begins by asking learners to think about their own personal use of portfolios. Immediately following, the essential material elements are presented in a cartoon image, capitalizing on the benefits of dual coding (Id.), using both images and key words to help learners pay attention and select appropriate information. The image also relies on spatial contiguity (Id.) in its presentation format. This webpage itself would fit into Mayer's (Id.) use of multimedia as "information acquisition." However, coupled with a reflective activity, learners would be able to make more integrated sense of the types of portfolios available and which types would be most suited for their particular needs.
References:
Barrett, H. (n.d.). ePortfolios and Google Apps. [Webpage]. Retrieved from http://sites.google.com/site/eportfolioapps/overview/blog-entry-eportfolios-and-googleapps
Mayer, R. (2009). Multimedia learning (2nd Ed.). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
Zunal web quest maker allows teachers to create web quests to present content to students. The web quest can serve as a guide while students explore content on their own. This allows them to delve more deeply into topics of interest. Each web quest has welcome, introduction, task, process, evaluation, and conclusion pages. Membership also allows teachers to search all web quests created on Zunal to use them in their classroom. With a Professional membership, users can copy and edit other user's web quests to personalize them for use in their classroom. Professional membership also allows access to other features, like the ability to embed additional pages, pre-test and post-test, rubric, quiz, map, and games. Using a web quest created by Zunal can help learners manage the information being presented. The evaluation page can be used to promote generative processing. This site is better than other similar sites because of all of the features available, including the ability to edit web quests made by other users and all of the pages that can be added into the web quest, like maps and games.
Description: This is a tutorial on the Word 2010 environment. This helps students become familiar with the new version of Microsoft Word before attending the Word 2010 Introduction training class at our facility.
Explanation: There are many videos online that help to show how to use Microsoft Office. Even Microsoft has tutorials. I have found these to be exceptional. They provide text, graphics, videos and hands-on tutorials created in Flash. This all-round training option meets the needs of all learning styles.
Prezi is an interactive and free presentation tool. You can create slide shows online and present them that way, or download them and show them as a power point type show.
Prezi is an online tool used to create presentations; it can also be downloaded to create presentations offline that can be uploaded later. It's a blank canvas that you craft with images, text, and videos.
Prezi is a site that allows you to create presentations online. It has an option for you to do this without purchasing a subscription. It allows you to turn these presentations into video format. You can also view existing presentations made by others.
Prezi is a very interesting presentation application that allows the developer to present in a nonlinear fashion. This would be a very useful tool for teaching some concepts that require the application of feedback loops or to show the big picture of a given concept. I chose this presentation application to present because of the different application and also the ease of video introduction. Video is very difficult to use in PowerPoint and since Prezi allows for easy youtube introduction then I thought this would be the great application for multimedia development.
http://prezi.com/index/
There is a very good basic tutorial that shows how to get started with prezi at the following site.
http://prezi.com/learn/getting-started/
My media specialist introduced my students and me to Prezi a couple of months ago. This is a great way to present your ideas over the standard Power Point presentation. Prezi allows you to tell your story or share ideas by creating the presentation on a large canvas. You then link one idea to the next including: text, images, and videos. This allows your audience to see the big picture and the individual details.
Prezi is a web based power point presentation with a twist. It is easy to use and FREE. I would encourage my workshoppers to use this tool to have students create the steps of learning a dance. This would be a great way to present the knowledge that they have acquired by using the Wii Just Dance program. I might also suggest that they use it to have students create and teach their own warm-ups.
The w3schools introduction to HTML pages serve as pre-training material as they help introduce the topics associated with Web programming. The site serves as a good primer that can be used prior to learning HTML tags and engaging in coding. I prefer this site to others as the navigation is helpful and the layout is concise, but advertisements are present. Considering essential cognitive load, the introductory pages may help students organize their thoughts about Web design and programming in HTML prior to actually beginning the hands-on portion of a programming lesson.
This video provides an introduction to student response systems for teachers who are unfamiliar with clickers and how they can assist a teacher in the classroom. The video explains various aspects of clickers and provides demonstrations on the different aspects that teachers can use in conjunction with the clickers. Many teachers are not familiar with technology; therefore, they need extra support and help when incorporating new technology into the classroom. The video explains various aspects of using student response devises. The video is more technology centered than learner centered. The emphasis is placed on using technology to modify or enhance a lesson. Mayer, (2009) explains the technology centered approaches are not always the most effective. The learner needs to be the focus of the lesson not the technology. This instructional video focuses on the technology and not the learner. The video explains various aspects but many viewers might feel overwhelmed when listening because they do not understand the terminology.
This video introduces Smart boards in the classroom. It discusses the effectiveness of the Smart board to deliver instruction that is engaging and motivating to students.
This video is a short clip from the CBS Evening News. The news cast explains the clicker craze taking place across the nation. Teachers and students explain the benefits of using clickers in the classroom instead of a standard paper and pencil assignment. Clickers are especially useful at large universities; the clickers are used to help maintain a connection with students when there are several hundred in the classroom. The introduction of clickers can be confusing and stressful for teachers. The news clip explains the usage of clickers in a generative learning way. The video interview demonstrates the benefits of clickers and summarizes how and why one wants to include clickers into daily instruction.
Pre-Training Introduction\n\nThis is a pumpkin carving site. It allows students to use basic skills to carve pumpkins and post them to the gallery for viewing. This will allow me to see which students are able to navigate the mouse, click and drag, save and post without them realizing they are actually completing a pre-training task.
I checked out several pumpkin carving sites before I chose this one. I like it better because it allows students to choose multiple tools to use and also provides them with a broader scale of navigational skills to explore and learn. This will help us in our plotting of our activities in Google Earth/Sky later in the workshop.
Cynthia
This is one of two sites that I will be using in my Graphic Organizer and Presentation. This site is a compilation of various astronomy resources, games, and presentations for kids. I love it because it has very bright graphics and is easy to navigate. This will be the introduction to the Solar System which will give the students information to use in their authentic assessment. They can view this via my laptop with the LCD Projector and a large screen. Although it will be a visual or graphic, it will also be part of the presentation. The graphic organizer will be the actual tabs that will show pictures of the different planets and then we will click on each planet to view more information which will be needed in the authentic assessment. Cynthia
Assignment#3: Sliderocket has a free "light" option and a paying option to create and post presentations which can incorporate animation and video. The presentation can be posted and accessed online. The option also offers a collaboration and interaction option.
Sliderocket's free version can be used to create vivid online presentations for assessments. It promotes generative learning because students can use it to present final products that reflect their understanding. I chose this site because of the flexibility avaiable for its presentations and its reputable nature.
Slide Rocket allows the user to create new PowerPoint style presentation or to import presentations from PowerPoint. These presentations can be shared and the site keeps track of how many users are viewing the presentation and how it is being shared. Because it allows the user to use existing presentations, it also eliminates the need for a single computer to be able to edit the presentation.
Using SlideRocket gives users the advantage of importing simple presentations and creating animated slideshows. SlideRocket offers professional level tools unavailable thorough other presentation websites. By starting with simple concepts and linking them together between slides, workshop participants get a clear pre-training introduction to difficult production content.
The wisemapping site offers a free online tool for creating graphic organizers / mind maps similar to those created by webspiration. However, wisemapping provides excellent file export functionality saving as .jpg, .png, .pdf, and other file formats. Also of interest are collapsible / expandable branches that could facilitate a gradual introduction of topics in a live lesson, as well as the ability to include notes, Web links, and a variety of icons in each node as needed. While much of the formatting options are present, as compared to webspiration, some items are not as robust. With more time, however, the functionality may rival or surpass webspiration or other products. In the mean time, the saving functionality, branching without termination nodes (use a line instead), and collapsibility are features that may prove more useful than comparable tools. Considering essential cognitive processing, the tool may assist with selecting and organizing complex material in order to reach a generative processing state. This may be possible by presenting information in a keyed and organized approach, which is a central premise of most mind mapping software.
The multimedia application on this website adequately addresses the learner centered approach in its design. It does so in a number of ways, in particular in how it allows the learner to manipulate the multimedia application and then represents the outcome of that manipulation in the form of a cartoon video. Mayer held that the brain possesses dual channels, an auditory and visual processor, and each processes the information separately, later merging these two experiences together to create knowledge (Mayer, 2009, p. 64). This multimedia site works on both aspects of knowledge building in that it includes both and auditory and visual graphics. However, once the introduction is completed the auditory component does not contain any content related information so the user can chose to mute the sound (Mayer, 2009, p. 64). The strength of this multimedia is that it allows the user to manipulate the video itself. For example, students chose a gas, and then select its level in the atmosphere (high-medium-low). From there, the multimedia video plays and shows them in about a thirty second video what would happen on earth in an accelerated time progression in order for students to see the impact the gases have on the atmosphere. However, it is technology centered as well because it includes lots of different graphic elements within the same application, some that can be directly manipulated by the user and others that cannot.
This website allows you to get a basic tour of the new Blackboard environment (Blackboard Learn) through a tour that includes a narrated screen cast video. It is not interacted, but it is sufficiently detailed to give a thorough overview. It is better than most tours at their because it provides an introduction with the newest Blackboard, whose navigation as a instructor is significantly different from prior versions.
Digital Storytelling is the practice of using computer-based tools to tell stories. As with traditional storytelling, most digital stories focus on a specific topic and contain a particular point of view. However, as the name implies, digital stories usually contain some mixture of computer-based images, text, recorded audio narration, video clips and/or music. Digital stories can vary in length, but most of the stories used in education typically last between two and ten minutes. And the topics that are used in Digital Storytelling range from personal tales to the recounting of historical events, from exploring life in one's own community to the search for life in other corners of the universe, and literally, everything in between. A great way to begin learning about Digital Storytelling is by watching the following video introduction to Digital Storytelling.
From the creator's perspective, this sit handles the creative aspect of a presentation so one can focus more on the content. Animoto brings lessons to life with videos, images, and audio. An educator can create a presentation about historical significant people integrating well-known quotes or as an introduction tool to a new unit with a picture collage and text.
