“The multimedia effect—people learn more deeply from words and graphics than from words alone.” —Clark & Meyer, 2016, p. 81 Though multimedia seems familiar to many in social media and EdTech circles, there is more to it than meets the eyes. Over the past seven weeks I had the pleasure of enrolling in EdTech 513: Multimedia, which is predicated upon the various principles from Richard E. Mayer's Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning (see YouTube clip below). This course, offered by Boise State University, unpacks multimedia through the lens of e-learning and approaches it from the perspective of evidence, both experiential and research-based, that supports learning. Learning has long been said to be both an art and a science. However, as this course, through the seminal text of Clark and Meyer (2016), has made clear, learning is becoming far more of a science. It is best approached this way if we are to teach in ways that students actually learn rather than how we commonsensically think they learn or should learn, which is often a reflection of how we learn—our preferred mode of learning, which implies the use of learning styles that turned out to be without research merit and thereby an educational myth. Hence, rather than base our instruction on common sense, it is best to have research that supports and augment the effectiveness of our instructional design.
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“In 10 years’ time, technology’s greatest impact on higher education will be the opening of accessibility and the movement toward more blended classrooms, making classroom time more efficient and focused on personalized learning.” —Anant Agarwal | President, edX (03/27/13) This summer, I had the privilege of enrolling in EdTech 522: Online Teaching for Adult Learners. This course surely lived up to its course catalog description, which describes it as “an online course emphasizing andragogy and best practice in online teaching, analyzing online teaching tools, planning, facilitating, and assessing collaborative and interactive e-learning experiences, and gaining practical experience teaching online” (BSU, 2017). Broken down into six modules, this course exposed learners to a wide array of topics beneficial to an online course designer or facilitator. These topics addressed ranged from adult learning theory, understanding the online learner, best practices in online teaching, comparing online courses, reviewing online learning tools, creating Rich Media tutorials, designing an online course, and teaching hybrid/blended courses. As you might have concluded, this summer course—offered over a seven-week period—was very labor intensive but I must admit it was one I found to be personally enjoyable as well as technologically insightful and professionally rewarding.
“Many of us believe that hybrid learning can give you the best of both worlds: You get the access and flexibility of an online course with the additional support and comfort of a classroom interaction along with faculty and your classmates.” —Kevin Currie Blended learning...hybrid course...1:1 program...Web facilitated...fully online...these are some of the terms used to describe the instructional phenomenon of including technology and/or digital tools into the teaching/learning process to enhance the learning experience and meet the needs of students. Unfortunately, these terms are tossed about the technological realm of course facilitating by the uninitiated and those novices experimenting with tech tools in their lesson designs. Fortunately, Ko and Rossen (2017) provide some clarity to this issue by suggesting a graduated approach to technology integration and adoption into the teaching/learning process. In other words, how do I tell if it is Web facilitated, blended learning or truly an online course?
“When I ask most people to describe EDpuzzle, they respond with something along the lines of: “a tool for teachers to embed questions into videos, primarily to be used to assign homework.” What’s missing here is the power of EDpuzzle as a student creation tool...for project-based learning. By creating “Student projects” in EDpuzzle, teachers can allow students to do the authoring.” —Stacey Roshan EDpuzzle. Have you ever heard about EDpuzzle—the 81st listed tech tool on Jane Hart’s (2016) top 200 tools for learning? If you have, what’s your opinion of it? Do you give it a thumbs up or a thumbs down? If you have no idea what EDpuzzle is, you’re in the right place to learn about it! As my goal for this Online Learning Tools Presentation is to critically review, from a professional and applicability standpoint, the software known as EDpuzzle. Yes, I’ll review EDpuzzle—an interactive online video-editing tool with analytics for engaging learners—from an online instructor’s perspective. But before I do so, if you’re a novice to EDpuzzle or need an example of what an EDpuzzle video looks like in action, then I’d like for you to check out this tutorial and review video that veteran educator Adam Howard (2015) created. If you are sufficiently familiar with EDpuzzle’s video learning lessons, then proceed with my review.
“In a classroom, the instructor is often the ‘sage on the stage.’ Online, the instructor is more like the ‘sage on the page.’” —Susan Ko & Steve Rossen E-learning and online education is defined as “conducting a course partially or entirely through the internet” (Ko & Rossen, 2017, p. 3), and has been around for approximately two decades. Knowles in the 1970s popularized ‘andragogy’ and defined that term as ‘the art and science of helping adults learn’ (Darlo, 2016; Stavredes, 2011; Taylor & Kroth, 2009). Yet, many people—from those for whom life online is second nature to those who struggle to stay abreast with the constantly evolving and dizzying pace of new Web 2.0 technologies—still do not fully grasp the underlying assumptions and principles upon which the ‘whys’ and ‘hows’ of online instruction are predicated (Ko & Rossen, 2017). Perhaps, this is attributed to the rapid growth of online education. In fact, reliable and effective training for instructors have been scarce, and those that are available tend to be inconsistent and inadequate (Ko & Rossen, 2017). To make matters worse, these trainings too often are offered in a traditional classroom or computer lab setting rather than in real-life teaching situation—i.e., alone at the instructor’s own computer (Stavredes, 2011). The point I am making: “Online education is no longer a novelty” (Ko & Rossen, 2017, p. 5), but its assumptions and principles are for many instructors, both online and face-to-face (F2F).
"The most important thing that schools can do is not to use technology in the curriculum more, but to use it more effectively." – John G. Palfrey and Urs Gasser
"Every major technological innovation propels humanity forward to the point of no return." —Newton Lee
“Statistics—even when accurate—are only an image of the past that can then be Photoshopped before being pasted on to the future.” —Will Self
“...in today’s world, one of accelerating change, in which many skills become obsolete nearly as fast as they are learned, both schooling and learning are under siege.” —Allan Collins & Richard Halverson
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AuthorFrank Gomez is a career educator who has served in various capacities and levels in education. He is currently pursuing an Ed.D. in Educational Technology (with specializations in technology integration and online teaching and learning for adult learners) at Boise State University, while serving as the vice principal and a junior high teacher/Technology Integration Specialist at a Catholic TK-8 school in SoCal. Frank is interested in poetry, philosophy, the interdisciplinary nature of education, and of course technology. Archives
August 2018
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