I started thinking about this task from the perspective of where our staff are at with their ICT. In order to confirm my intuitive understanding, I created and circulated a survey using Google Forms. The results can be found here. Our school is a relatively small, regional college offering both curriculum and co-curriculum options equal to those conducted by far bigger schools. This means our teachers are incredibly busy, and professional learning needs are thinly spread to cater for our diverse programs.

We have had interactive whiteboards and tablet PCs provided in our workplace since 2007 yet the change in pedagogy has been minimal. There has been an assumption by some of our leadership team that ICT does not need further professional learning opportunities because the need has already been met. Given the nature of the changing technology and software programs, this means that teaching and learning through technology has primarily been focussed on presenting and processing.

Since 2012, year 9s have been issued with a tablet PC with digitised pens similar to those used by staff. The power of the pen is something that has been seen as critical by the team choosing the device (and research is now starting to support this decision). The students new to devices, years 6 to 8, will be issued with an iPad. In order to prepare for this, all staff working on the senior campus have now been issued with an iPad so that they can prepare for next year.

This decision has been met with concern, and there has been a groundswell of discussion about why our current devices are educationally appropriate, and the new devices will not offer the same power or flexibility. It is this educational future that I wished to target with the design of my artefact.

When we commenced work on our digital artefact, Powtoon was the first platform I investigated, and the content I included summed up what I was hearing from my colleagues. The clip is incomplete in terms of content, as I ran out of time – an issue with using free versions of such software! I have not attempted to add a voice over – just wanted to set the scene.

http://www.powtoon.com/embed/ec3YsGV1tDZ/

I also investigated the new Office Mix add in for PowerPoint as an option. This would work well for teachers who have a number of already created PowerPoints and would like to revamp them for the digital world. This option allowed me to use some beautiful images but the recording of voice plus music wasn’t obviously possible and the end result was not well rendered. The mobile quality was very poor. This is the lower level of computer quality which was better. Note how the transitions make the voice over patchy.

The third option was using screen capture software to create a film of something that was on my computer screen. For this I learned how to use Microsoft Lync recording. This is the Internet based phone system in our school, and offers webinar capabilities and screen casting. Last year I used the meeting capability for my Creative Coffee morning to include two of my classmates from CSU (Liz and Deborah) in our local event. You can read about it here: http://thinkspace.csu.edu.au/msimkin/2014/09/15/creative-coffee-inventive-format/. The list of conversations between the two external participants was exported straight from the Lync “chat”.

This is what the screen capture option looks like. You can see why I rejected this option as unsuitable for this task: I could cope with my name and school appearing at the start but the “looks like you’re the only one in the meeting” did not convey the professional finish I required. I believe I could have edited this out, but I ran out of time to work out how.

The program chosen affects the end product. Several scenarios were considered during the design phase: a circus type theme (ladies and gentlemen… plus drum roll); magic potion or superhero; and the selected beginning – and animated smile and voiceover inviting participation. This was considered more authentic, easier to deliver and more inclusive. It is important to have a story that allows the audience to feel included, and which quickly indicates why the message is important for each individual (Air, Oakland, & Walters, 2014, p. 34). That’s why some of these examples are so different from the finished product.

So, in summary, teachers wishing to make digital artefacts need programs that offer the easiest option for creating and publishing the end product. Our role is to assist with the learning process, and too much time taken away from our primary focus is a disadvantage to our students.

Summary of pros and cons:

I did have problems rendering the scribe to film, and I contacted @Sparkol and @VideoScribeApp via Twitter.  They advised me to lodge a ticket with support and provided the link to do so. I was really pleased to get a punctual reply. Unfortunately, it was too late to save my original production, which I had altered dramatically in order to meet the deadline for this task.

This reflection is on the process and programs that were used to create my artefact which you can find here. The reference is produced by the VidoeScribe team and is useful for any type of digital artefact, although it is based on scribing as the presentation device.

References

Air, J., Oakland, E., & Walters, C. (2014). Video Scribing; How Whiteboard Animation Will Get You Heard. Sparkol Limited.

A new culture of learning

The new culture of learning described by Thomas and Brown resonates with many aspects of the Master of Education Knowledge Networks and Digital Innovation course that many students of this subject are undertaking. They define this culture as invisible, without traditional structure but operating in a defined environment which encourages the freedom to research (Thomas & Brown, 2011, pp. 17-18). Acknowledgement is given that playing in such a culture leads to the development of passions and ideas (Thomas & Brown, 2011, p. 18). This style of framework for learning cultivates citizenship, generates feedback leading to improvement for future students, and establishes the use of rich and highly textured examples of cross referencing and communication to form a learning community from the teachers and students within the group (Thomas & Brown, 2011, pp. 22-25).

So many new “friends” who are also peers and collaborators have been introduced to each other in a virtual sense through the shared work on the study modules that guide our learning. Sharing a “creative coffee” for INF536 proved incredibly valuable in ways beyond imagination (thanks Deborah and Liz!). Encouragement from Heather Baillie saw me enrol in this subject, and commentary through Twitter #feeds (Simon Keily) supported me through frustrations and celebrations. Sharing blog posts and video footage of our concepts and workplaces was akin to a site visit (thanks Matt Ives), and gentle encouragement from our subject coordinators provided a platform from which to launch our own practical applications. For me, as a lone practitioner in a small regional school, the new culture of learning has provided a much loved and respected “faculty” from which to draw inspiration and strength.

For students in my Year 12 History Revolutions class, I have attempted to create a similar environment. Working through collaborative learning activities using a range of techniques in 2014 was amazing, and similarly to Douglas Thomas, I felt that my students taught me far more than I taught them (Thomas & Brown, 2011, p. 25). This year a new tool, collaborative Microsoft OneNote, is encouraging a valuable mix of formal teacher notes (like those provided in CSU’s Blackboard), individual student notes, which are visible to me as the teacher, and shared working space which has superseded the Interactive Whiteboard activities paper-based work of the past. Giving feedback through audio recording that moves down the student’s page as aspects are identified for improvement or congratulations is amazingly powerful.

In terms of difference from the case studies provided by Thomas and Brown, my one formal class is restricted because it is a VCE course examined externally in November. This precludes a higher degree of personal control than Sam experiences through his involvement in Scratch, Douglas’ Massively Multi-player Online Games course, or Allen’s self-taught programming skills (Thomas & Brown, 2011, pp. 22-28). It also makes creation of an online sharing community such as Diabetes Daily more problematic (Thomas & Brown, 2011, pp. 29-30). The very nature of the Australian Tertiary Assessment Ranking system makes students at this level very wary of sharing too much due to a fear of reducing their own results or enabling another to supersede their position within the statewide cohort. Even teachers guard their own material closely, and in some schools Principals are reluctant to allow their staff to share work in case it affects enrolments in a negative fashion.

Within the more open library skill based programs offered to both teachers and students, however there is a glimmer of potential through such a culture of learning.

References

Thomas, D., & Brown, J. (2011). Arc-of-Life-Learning. A new culture of learning, 17-33.

Being a student in the connected world.

Reflecting on the Slideshare put together by Penelope Coutas for her studies in 2010 – several sides resonated with both the subject readings we are undertaking at present, and also my lived experience in the connected world. The slides that impacted on my thinking the most were:

Slide 5

It is interesting to muse on the fact that ontology deals with the nature of being, yet the “place” that comprises virtual reality is doubted in terms of its multi-locational presence, criticised for it’s apparent disorder, and challenged for its “authenticity. Compare the concepts of The dark Side of information overload, anxiety and other paraxes and pathologies (Bawden, D., & Robinson, L. 2009) with De Saulles more optimistic New Models of Information Production (De Saulles 2012)

Slide 12 Personal Learning Environment and Personal Learning Network

This slide shows the complete integration of peoples’personal learning  environment within a networked world. Technological tools and artefacts provide the link between the way information is able to be collated, recreated and used to create new information which is then, in turn, shared. The spirit that exists in a knowledge networked society is pervasive and encouraging, and subjects such as Knowledge Networking for Educators continue to demonstrate this in its full capacity. These learning realities are well summed up in Microsoft’s ATC21S (2014) and are gradually taking hold within Australian educational settings.

Part of slide 26, which is a diagrammatic representation of people’s interactivity. It shows names of people who have become experts in sharing information and modelling social learning interactivity. Among the names shown are: CSU’s Judy O’Connell, Victorian educator, Jess McCullogh, online content creator for education Bryn Jones from Perth, and Jim Mullaney, Google expert from RMIT university.

Slide 27 “Being a student today”  shows the skills and processes that must be worked through in order to produce successful results. Brown and Duguid spend much time analysing the limits, redefinition and oversimplification (as demonstrated by models such as the 6Ds described on page 22) of information in its broadest sense (Brown & Duguid, 2000 pp. 11-22)

Slide 36 is the a valuable insight into the relationship between who is sorting things out and for what purpose. The focus has been on the tools for quite some time, but the tools are of lesser importance that the information provided by them, the connections they enable between people and the learning they facilitate. It is in the facilitation process that information specialists such as teacher-librarians have a clear role to play within twenty-first century schools, facilitating the cultivation of imagination through assisting learners of all ages to harness information appropriate to their quest (Thomas & Brown, 2011 p.31).

References

Assessment and Teaching of 21st Century Skills (ATC21S). (2014). Retrieved March 4, 2015, from Microsoft Education: http://www.microsoft.com/education/en-au/leadership/Pages/assessment.aspx

Bawden, D., & Robinson, L. (2009). The dark Side of information overload, anxiety and other paraxes and pathologies. Journal of Information Science, 35(2), 180-191.

Brown, J., & Duguid, P. (2000). Limits to Information. In J. Brown, & P. Duguid, Social Life of Information (pp. 11-33). Boston: Harvard Business School Press.

Coutas, P. (2010, October 8). New Sources of Information. Retrieved March 7, 2015, from Slideshare: http://www.slideshare.net/pcoutas/new-sources-of-information

De Saulles, M. (2012). New Models of Information Production. Information 2.0: New Models of Information Production, Distribution and Consumption., 13-35.

Thomas, D., & Brown, J. (2011). Arc-of-Life-Learning. A new culture of learning, 17-33.