Week 4 - Media in Online Learning Spaces



Digital Media Overwhelm.


Let me just say from the outset that I am a huge fan of technology, both personally and in the classroom. That said, like anything good in life, it can lead to a huge amount of off task behaviour in the form of overwhelming anxiety-induced procrastination and/or time-wasting, side-track following procrastination. For me this week, the former has been the biggest problem. Actually, to tell you the truth it's been an issue for a number of weeks and I really needed to stop kidding myself that I was OK, and start putting strategies in place to control the anxiety and get back on track. These are the thoughts that have been plaguing me recently:

Journal Cover; available from Amazon.
Great way to remind myself to prioritise my thoughts.

  1. I need to find the "perfect" way to share the information on my blog. This led to excess hours searching Pinterest, other student and online blogs. 
  2. How do I "best" take notes from my classes so that I remember them in the future? This led to hours of research on note taking; digital vs. physical, tools to use, psychological evidence.
  3. Every course that has used digital tools has used different digital tools, how do I keep track of them so they are useful in the future?
  4. If I can't handle the overwhelming amount of information now, how am I going to use it effectively when I am finally teaching?
  5. If I can't get my anxiety under control now, how am I going to handle the pressures of teaching?
  6. I don't want to get to the end of my degree and find that I have completed the assessment well but not participated with the weekly content as I should have. 
  7. How do we help our 6 year old daughter navigate severe anxiety and Level 2 ASD; allowing her to grow into a confident individual, able to do anything in life that she puts her mind too.
  8. Finances, don't even get me started on that one!
I know I am not alone in this! Although you probably don't have the same thoughts, with the current situation (Co-vid 19) changing society as we know it, I am sure that other things are worrying you. I hope me sharing my troubling thoughts gives you the courage to share yours with someone. I also plan on sharing my strategies on my Wordpress Blog; Me for the World to See.

Now to get into the task at hand; this week was all about investigating and familiarising ourselves with digital media. 



 (Image of Notebook for Teacher by EngineStart, a notebook sharing tool for classroom teachers. I am trailing it this week, to gauge usefulness for classroom note taking and sharing.)

In a 2015 article, Sumit Mukherjee writes that communication scientists have proved that up to 83% of sensory information received by the brain is through the eyes. This is particularly pertinent for disciplines like Geography, which has used visual information for sharing, teaching and researching for hundreds of years. From using a camera to photograph the who or "what of where" (Geographers will understand that term) to the use of sophisticated coding to create digital maps and navigation software, visualising the world we live in has always been a very important part of Geography.

Whiteboards and projectors are found in nearly every classroom in Australia now and digital media is commonly used to present information to our students. Whether it be in PowerPoint presentations, Adobe Sparks or a vast range of other tools, inserted images help teachers "get the point across" to their students in a more realistic fashion. Realistic here means two things. The first being that the teacher does not have the time to either develop or read an eloquent description of a place or event that can be shown to students with one or two images.

"Queensland clears a Gabba sized area of trees every three minutes".

The second is that real-life events are better shown than told to the students as a story made up to prove a point, especially when it comes to Geography and similar subjects where proof of real life occurrences are only a "Google" away. Seeing visually, evokes emotions that may not be able to surface if the teacher just talks about a place or event that the students have never seen or heard about.

Child labor in Afganistan Mine.
While images in PowerPoint presentations, and even Youtube clips, are all great; often they do not lead to a students development of higher-order thinking skills. They only serve to enhance the education platform that is already there, it does not transform it. In other words, an image embedded into a PowerPoint presentation is no different to the students opening up an encyclopaedia and viewing the image there.

Transforming the classroom pedagogy, from teacher-centred to student-centred is made possible and exciting through the use of digital media. A little research on the web can locate numerous tools and ideas for teachers. Below are some examples I found, a number of which could be completed by the student.

Image: Global Carbon Footprint. Students could use Publisher or PowerPoint
 to make a similar infographic with class or school data collected in surveys.
Middle School students can be engaged through the use of comic strips. I found one below, developed by National Geographic about What is Geography. It would make a great introduction lesson.


National Geographic Comic. "What is Geography"


Even more engaging for the students would be to use a platform such as Pixton Comics. Students could even create their own comic strips to answer a question or discuss a topic with a partner.

Mrs Morrison's Geography class photo.

Getting started on revising a previous discussion.

Using a previous discussion I generated a comic with the intention of the students creating their own comics with information they will gather in pairs. I had previously set my class up in Pixton.

Finished Comic. Great introduction for a class,
especially when it is created from a previous class discussion.

In a previous course I have also used a lot of digital media to teach and create thought provoking subject matter for a Home Economics class. The link to my Weebly Blog is; http://mrsmorrisonhomeeconomist.weebly.com/

Comments

Popular Posts