What is your biggest takeaway from the 703 class? What’s been your favorite part of the class? Where did you struggle and what did you do to push through your struggle? How do your skills in transliteracy relate to the TPACK model?
My favorite part of class 703 was making the video. It was also the most challenging. And because it was challenging, and creative, it was the most rewarding project. I like the idea of having a website that contains my work from this program. It is out there in the digital world, in all its imperfection, but will hopefully will help teachers who are interested in the theme of outdoor education. I feel like my biggest struggle was with very silly things. My computer did not seem to function properly. For example, whenever I downloaded something, I could not find it. Nothing appears in my downloads folder. I manage to find things somehow. But every time I have to perform digital somersaults to connect things. Other times I can't connect things. My video does not have many photos from my class. For some reason the photos in my iCloud won't appear where they should be, either. I suspect it has to do with which accounts are linked to what. It is complicated and frustrating for me. So I just used stock photos for most of the time. I know things are not appearing because of some simple problem that a couple of clicks could fix. I searched for solutions on the Internet. None of them seemed to address my problem. It's this "not knowing" and "not being able to find it out" that bugs me about computers. Solutions are hidden. People who might know how to help are not around. I feel like I have "old school" intuitive problem solving skills that don't apply to technology. Having suffered like this is what I have been needing to improve my teaching game, however. Now that I've made videos I'll be able to help my students do the same. I'm really looking forward to passing along the skills I've learned in these classes to my students. I'm super duper exited to try my outdoor photography project starting at the beginning of the school year. With the distance learning model we'll be in, it will really come in handy!
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I'm deep in the learning pit. I'm torn between two kinds of videos I might make and I can't figure out which one to use. What's keeping me from deciding is the idea that I might be able to creatively blend the two styles. The practical documentary would be of me being interviewed on the A roll, and using photos and videos from the school year on the B roll. It makes sense because it tells the story of my research in a real way. The other option is to try to get creative and do some filming. The reading and video tutorials from this week make me feel like this is the expectation. I also feel it would be fun, interesting, challenging, and creative. But I can't figure out a way I could do a documentary about what happened last school year by filming now. I thought of doing something with my son. I could film him on devices inside and then take him outdoors and film him using devices in nature. (It would be funny if he dressed in a Bigfoot outfit.) But then the commentary and story line would not have much in common with my actual project. It would not be a documentary of my project. It would be a documentary about the father of Bigfoot, or of Bigfoot himself. Now that might work, but would it be too silly? Are the costume stores even open? Ellison did something where she blended her home experience with her project. I could try something similar, I guess. But then I can't imagine what my interview questions would be. I'd have to pay my son a lot to do that, also. Maybe... So, Sasquatch, (Can I call you Sas?)...how did it feel to be indoors all day on screens? etc, etc... The best advice I heard from the videos I've been watching on YouTube has to do with the discomfort of trying something new. They said to put the interviewee at ease by telling them that if they say something wrong, it can be re-recorded and edited. The takes a lot of stress off of the interview. Give us an honest appraisal of your journey around trying to produce your Capstone Project. What problems have you encountered? How will you solve them?
So far my biggest stumbling block has been my unfamiliarity with creating content on the Internet. I struggle with linking things between platforms and just knowing where and how and why to click on buttons that often seem hidden behind "windows" or tabs or whatever. Nothing seems to work the first time. Much feels counter-intuitive and not seamless. I think everything is more complicated than it should be because there are so many companies and platforms and file types and places to store things, etc, etc. Sometimes my wife helps me and sometimes YouTube videos do. I'm learning that a vital 21st Century skill is just being able to "teach yourself" new skills most of the time. A big problem is my info graphic. I see that most others that my peers have done are related to the lessons or the process that their project incorporated. Since I was not able to complete the core part of my study, I don't know if I can do an honest, informative info graphic on this. I can come up with something alternative to do. What aha’s have you encountered as you watch mini-documentaries and past capstone videos? How are they different? Think about who you are creating the mini-documentary for? What essential points will be most important to them and how will you address them in your storytelling? It's comforting to see how different the capstone videos are. They all work. That's good. The mini-documentaries taught me what b roll is. I learned that there is a real art to piecing together the different images and b roll footage with the interview footage. Right now I'm juggling a few things that I might piece together for my video. One is the interview footage and audio. The other could be the story line. When I wrote the story line I thought that it could also be read aloud and woven in between the interview cuts in order to give a more complete picture of the project as it evolved, then crashed, and evolved again. I uploaded a lot of images and videos from the past school year that I think could be enough to tell the story visually. I don't think I'll have to record any video to re-create what the project was about. When I was uploading images into WeVideo they actually helped me to imagine how the story line will read. I also took pictures of my sketches and put them in there to help tell the story along if I need to use them. The hard part is going to be piecing it all together. I need a storyboard planner where I can order and overlap the b roll images and video, the interview video cuts and voice audio, and the story line audio. If I can tell the story without the story line audio, I think I should do that. It might be overkill and I should be able to tell the story with just the interview and the images. Kinda like reading between the lines. If I can't maybe the story is too long and complicated to maintain interest. My documentary is for teachers or aspiring teachers and specifically for teachers interested in teaching outdoor science. I need to keep that in mind and give what I think would be the most useful and interesting tidbits of information. They should come away from the video knowing at least one thing they could go look into if they wanted to. I took advantage of Lisa's post on Remind about how to create an icon using Adobe Spark. I watched her friend's YouTube video and made this. I would have liked for the figure to be holding a handheld device instead of a walking stick. If I can figure out how to make a figure that looks like this, but does that, I might change it. I could also live with this one. I actually made two as per the video's instructions. This one is supposed to have a transparent background so that I might be able to paste it into different backgrounds. I think I failed to make the text-backing transparent, however. Looks like I'll need to watch the video again. The first one I made is brown. It's supposed to look like the national parks icon. On this one, I did not get the color number of the background and did not match the text background perfectly to that. Again, more practice is needed.
So the icon is supposed to communicate how using screens can lead to getting outdoors. I'm not convinced that this idea has that kind of message. It looks like it is pointing upward, but I don't see the screen leading to the figure. I thought some wavy blue stream lines would be in there somewhere, but the experience with Adobe Spark, combined with my lack of experience, led to this product. Any comments and suggestions are greatly welcomed. Thank you. Questions for Reflection: 1) How does transliteracy change your current thoughts on the content you deliver? 2) How do you see the incorporation of transliteracy teaching methods increasing student inclusion and engagement? 3) How does sketchnoting fall into the transliteracy category and how was it for you to process information in this way? How might you use this in the classroom? Transliteracy is a unified way to think about literacy past, present and future. It is defined as: The ability to read, write and interact across a range of platforms, tools and media from signing and orality through handwriting, print, TV, radio and film, to digital social networks. 1. Define 2. Evaluate/Select 3. Manage 4. Create/Present/Act 5. Acknowledge These above skills are regarded as the ones transliterate people are better able to do through the use of apps, tools, media platforms, and digital social networks. I firmly believe that the integration of these methods will not only increase student engagement, but also increase learning on a deeper level, which arises out of empowering kids to do the above skills. Technology tools are integral to this. I can no longer teach using old methods of instruction such as lectures, textbooks, whiteboard presentations, and paper and pencil assignments. As I described in my "About the Author" section, I have always been focused on empowering students with the tools they need to be effective communicators. For years I was a Dual Language instructor, and I saw biliteracy as an important way to give students an edge. Now I'm seeing transliteracy as being potentially as empowering, if not more so, than knowing two languages. It's long been known how sketching and images can help students, and especially second language learners, to understand content and communicate their ideas. I can see how more frequent integration of sketch booking can scaffold a variety of skills we hope to teach students. For example, they can use it to plan the plot of a story they want to tell. The images stimulate the need to write more in order to explain them. And the images make the presentation of their stories much more engaging for their audience. Students can then take their images and stories and upload them onto slideshow presentations. These in turn can be placed in social media platforms in order to reach larger audiences. This is all very motivating for people. The slideshow presentations I was envisioning my students to make, based on their outdoor education experiences, could be even more powerful I now realize, if they intersperse drawings of the experience with the photos they took while outdoors. These would also be mixed in with slides that show the research they did about the photos they took. This technique could be very powerful in creating a narrative of the experience, and help students to demonstrate their learning, communication skills, and creativity to their peers, teachers, and families. |
AuthorJeremy Smith teaches third grade at Calistoga Elementary School. Archives
July 2020
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