Online learning- some observations

I decided to embed screencasts into a blog in order to deliver content to my A Level class and 'flip' some of my lessons; the screencast would deliver the content and the blog would offer context and further activities. For the most part, the blog and screencast combination worked well. However, some issues arose:

It seems that my students didn't start at the top of the blog and read down, as they would with a book. In fact, some didn't look at the title or date of each blog. Rather, they scanned the page for the most gratifying part, and ignored the rest. This habit isn't restricted to online content; over the years students have been drawn to resources within examination questions and ignored the preceding instructions. As a result, they mis-interpreted the question and lost marks. Also:

The students who read the text would see the links and other activities as optional further reading rather than an integral part of the delivery of the lesson.

The blog shows the most recent post first. Some students only read the most recent posts and missed the preceding content. 

In a world saturated with information, the ability to scan and filter is essential; I need to ensure that this filtering process doesn't just include the visually appealing resources but the accompanying information as well. Perhaps all of the information should be visually appealing? Then again, perhaps their attention would be drawn to the most appealing resource and the other information would still be filtered out?

In future, I intend to devote time to teach online study skills as part of the course and give more thought to the design and delivery of my digital content.

Making Screencasts with PowerPoint

We've all sat through dull and uninspiring PowerPoint presentations. The fatigue and boredom experienced when a presenter reads through dozens of text heavy slides is like death by a thousand cuts. However, PowerPoint is a versatile and useful tool that, when applied appropriately, can provide a variety of learning opportunities.

Recently, I've been using Powerpoint 2010 to create screencasts to deliver lessons to my A Level students while I recover from a knee operation. It's possible to create high fidelity video files (wmv.) of your presentations very easily by using 'Save and Send' under the 'File' tab in PowerPoint. Alternatively, you could use the 'Community Clips' tab on the banner to record at a lower resolution. I've uploaded my presentations to YouTube so that my students can access them anywhere and I can embed them in my teaching blog. I'll continue to use this method of delivery when I return to work as a way of flipping some of my lessons.

Before creating a video, you need to record your slideshow. In order to do this, simply press 'Record Slide Show' under the 'Slide Show' tab. It's possible to press the 'esc' key at any time during the recording and the animations and narration will be recorded up to that point. The narration is recorded as a sound file on each slide. This is an advantage as you don't have to re-record everything from the beginning if you fluff your lines (Tip: don't talk between slides as your voice isn't recorded during transitions).

I bought a cheap headset and  microphone from a local supermarket (like this one) to record my narration, though it's possible to record your voice with a built in microphone, if your device has one. Remember to keep your presentations shorter than 15 minutes if you wish to upload them to YouTube. Also, the longer the presentation, the longer it will take to convert to a wmv. file (this can take a while!).

I had some fun using animations to enliven my presentations and tried to keep the text to a minimum. In my next post I'll explain how I formatted and animated the objects in this Welsh medium presentation.  

The cartoon was taken from this website