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A month at home - never been busier

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Asthmatic blowing on their Peak Flow Meter

As I'm asthmatic I started remote or 'distributed' working a week before my colleagues - some of whom stayed at college to man the phones.

The transition to working online, and bringing as many teachers and students up to speed, has been both swift and largely smooth. GBMET has had dedicated 'learning technologists' in a Digital Team for several years. We have been pushing to bring staff, educators and students online for the last two years. The last 9 months has seen a breakthrough with internal workshops and conferences, greater integration with internal marketing and more one to one coaching.

The current pandemic has made it all the more urgent. If we think of it in terms of the stages of 'diffusion of innovations' then in the space of a few weeks we've broken free to take in the 'late adopters'; a few so called 'laggards' remain. Not a term I like. Too pejorative. 'Late developers' or 'Traditionalists' might be better.

How are you getting on?

We use Google Suite for Education. 

I was thrilled when Thinglink announced yesterday that they were working closely with Google so that all Google assets can be directly embedded into Thinglinks or 'interactivities' - the term is evolving!! 'Thinglinks' are what we who use the platform call them. 'Interactivities' is the term coined by Jilly Salmon 12 years ago - it is less cumbersome that 'interactive activities'. 

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Take a look and tell me what you think!

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Screenshort of part of a 360 tour of a bricklaying workshop

I've stitched together three tours which cover each of Electronics, Mechanical Engineering and Electronics labs. 

Electronics 360° Interactive  http://bit.ly/2uovM2U

Mechanical Engineering 360° Interactive   http://bit.ly/2w1imKy

Bricklaying  360° Interactive  http://bit.ly/2T9Q6xn

These can be used as they are, ideally if someone clicks around the space telling an audience what they are looking at. To use independently it is so easy to add this voice over. You just click on a scene and talk about it! 

As you have seen much more can be added depending on the intended use:

‘Hot spots’ where a video clip, or explanatory text and an image are used.

‘Hot spots’ that click to a close up.

Addition of ‘Interactive Activities’ – as demonstrated here in Catering.

Catering http://bit.ly/2w3izwN  

Any one of these ‘360 Tours’ can be ‘cloned’ i.e. copied in its entirety, renamed, and used for a different purpose, for example:

Health & Safety : we add further shots indicating a hazard and students must identify these and understand what to do

Teleport’ off site : 360 is wonderful for taking an audience somewhere out of bounds or inaccessible. With the right permissions I could get shots from a nuclear power plant, electricity sub-station, building site … you name it (In a former career I have produced training videos for all of these and many more!)


Permalink 2 comments (latest comment by Jonathan Vernon, Tuesday, 3 Mar 2020, 10:16)
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So east to add enriching elements like sound and video

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Monday, 4 Nov 2019, 15:24

 

 

https://www.thinglink.com/video/1244292101298978817

This is a piece of voice over recorded by one of our performing arts students

There are also simply video clips on how to swipe in and out of the centre, and how to login to a computer

https://www.thinglink.com/video/1244289378725920769

The idea is that anyone will find it easy to create interactive 360 tours such as this for all kinds of different reasons. 

Where do you think the applications are going to be most powerful? 

 

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So easy and intuative

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Thursday, 31 Oct 2019, 12:57

Using ThingLink to create a simple, clickable, 360° tour of the Learning Resource Centre (LRC) at one of our 5 sites at GB MET for SEND students (Special Educational Needs and Disabilities) I simply shot this clip on an iPad, which uploaded to my Google Photos album. I could have edited but had no need to do so. Labelled and downloaded I simply added the clip which can play on a loop until the user clicks away. I clicked on a microphone 'audio' button and added a simple commentary and we're done.

What I did find however, is that using the text box with a video clip sees the clip severely cropped. Next time I will also shot some far wider frames, possibly with a bias to the right hand side of the frame, so that the automatic cropping complements the video playback rather than rendering it useless - It is hardly good practice to show someone the need to press the Ctlr, Alt and Delete buttons together if you can only see one button. The SEND students I am advised have the mental age of children under the age of 10. 

Here's the link to this frame : https://www.thinglink.com/video/1244289378725920769 


What do you think?

How might these be used?

Health & Safety training and tours of college workshops?

Visits to distance building sites?

Underwater interactive tours of underwater cave systems?

What happens if you shrink to the size of a pea and are then accidentally swallowed? 

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Creating e-learning for SEND Students

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Wednesday, 30 Oct 2019, 10:11

Now that the development phase is passing into review, first with an SEND tutor and then with SEND studens themselves I am learning:

    • Value of Video Demo: signing in to a the resource centre, logging in to a computer.

    • Importance of talking them through things we may take for granted.  

    • Pick out key things, in this case opening and closing times.
    • Add a quiz to this to give it emphasis and to engage them.
    • Tell them often. They love repetition and will return regularly to something for a reminder
  • As Immersive Reader provides, best to have text on blue, yellow or green background and use Comic Sans as their favoured font as it is less 'harsh' than others.

  • Not all have Smartphones, say 5 out of 14 have no phone. 

  • 360 headsets would be fun to use if we had them, but proper ones!

  • 85% are auditory, or visual/auditory learners

    • Though my learning from the OU is that these learning preference categories are a nonsence unfounded in any science. Rather in this instance it is a medical aid surely? Someone who cannot see, or cannot hear will have a preference away from seeing or hearing - naturally, with it having nothing to do with learning.

I am delighted to share this with the OU community and my followers. Thoughts and comments please!

I was delighted with the course tutor's response, though I'm mostly awaiting for a response from a number of the SEND students themselves. It has to work for them, and be adjusted, even reinvented so as to appeal to and to work for them!

https://www.thinglink.com/mediacard/1244284378704510977  

“Slick, professional … and a lot of clicking which they will love!”

 

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Need an introduction to an easy to use interactivities tool ?

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This is ThingLink. Staring out as a tool for adding some interactivity to a 2d image now it embraces 360 images and 360 video and everything in between. You can add text and images, video clips and clinks. Text is now accessibility compliant was it works with Microsoft Immersive Reader.

I'm in a conference call with its creator and CEO Ulla Maaria Koivula and the head of development Ivan Kiprin on Friday to talk about their newly launched, or to be developed 'ThingLink Eductor' accreditation.

 

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