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Feeling wanted ...

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Thunderbird 5 the Space Station featuring John Tracy

Early days but a few teaching fails online talking to a blank wall of distracted teens is slowly emerging into something that will engage them - even if they want to be off camera and mostly silent. My eclectic mix is a challenge. I don't get to know a group of students, even a particular cohort or subject specialism. 

Four simple lessons learnt:

> it matters to be a 'subject matter expert' as you can talk, discuss and provide an inventive and relevant response to meet the needs or interests of the students or group at the time.

> channelled enthusiasm goes a long way, not gushing, nor over-confident, but the person at the helm with a sense of the direction to take.

> a video conference (as only the BBC will call it) i.e. Zoom (even if you're on Google Meet) can be as EdTech as it needs to be. The camera, microphone and Chat are enough to take a class and enough for most people if it is there first time. There is no need to throw in extras like slow 'death by PowerPoint', or faster 'death by PowerPoint' by making it interactive with the likes of PearDeck or Nearpod. A Google Form Quiz will do.

> where analogue meets digital. Hold something up to the camera. Prof Sir Hew Strachan couldn't be doing with 'present now' screens so during his gripping talk on the First World War he simply held up the covers of two or three books. I've taken to using a mini whiteboard while I am asking students to draw a Venn Diagram or Mind Map on whatever comes to hand. When they are done they hold it up to the screen - it works! Some go digital and use their phone or tablet, others get artistic with coloured pencils while others just doodle a thing on the back of an envelope. I can screenshot what they show me (I should have a recording of the class anyway) and for better resolution they can upload, share or email me their efforts. 


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Too busy to blog! Yelps

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Is this a good sign? My sympathy goes out to all teachers - I take classes (in theory) one day a week. This week I have stepped in to offer 'Isolation' cover for five classes. Putting together a 90 minute online class that follows lessons I've picked up in 10 weeks of PGCE takes a while - though the training allows me to get it done more quickly as I have a better feel for what will work.

But where is the work on live classes taught remotely to draw on for best practice? Maybe I'll author one.

OERs and resources available 'out there' is one thing - shoehorning them into your sessions is another. I know from the corporate training years that 'bespoke' was always best if you could afford it. Everything else screams 'compromise'.

I need to reversion somethign aimed at graduates and something else aimed at teachers. Playing a segment of these videos is easy enough, doing something myself and citing the sources is another. I still have to script it and record it.

At least I have recordings of these classes. When I have the energy and brain space I can reflect on each and the collection. And with three more days, and three more classes I will take the opportunity now to make changes.

The class is on digital communications - basically how to do better than PowerPoint or Slides. 

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Slides

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Age 17 or 18 in the learning centre at Appleby I had a go with the reel to reel black and white Sony video camera to record a video of me showing someone how to create a slide show ... using a box of physical slides. This is like writing a book to tell someone how to cave paint.

Four decades later, even if they are digital, why or why are we so hooked on the 'slide'.

Anyway, these are useful suggestions on how to make the most of them > Ted 10 Tipe for Better Slide Decks



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Ten tips on how to make better slides

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Age 17 or 18 in the learning centre at Appleby I had a go with the reel to reel black and white Sony video camera to record a video of me showing someone how to create a slide show ... using a box of physical slides. This is like writing a book to tell someone how to cave paint.

Four decades later, even if they are digital, why or why are we so hooked on the 'slide'.

Anyway, these are useful suggestions on how to make the most of them > Ted 10 Tipe for Better Slide Decks



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The SMAR Model

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Wednesday, 2 Dec 2020, 18:59


Substitution

Where technology is used as a direct substitute for what you might do already, with no functional change.

Slides, now Peardeck or Prezzi. Same thing.

Augmentation

Where technology is a direct substitute, but there is functional improvement over what you did without the technology.

Link to sites

Add audio 

Embed video

Modification

Where technology allows you to significantly redesign the task.

Web page(s) 

Quiz

Redefinition 

Where technology allows you to do what was previously not possible.


Podcast

Short video

A quiz

A VR interactive tour 

Blog it 


I can work with this from Open Learn's 'Taking Your Teaching Online'. Here if thought it through in terms of students I will be working with to enhance their slide presentations. 

Eight Principles of Effective Online Teaching

A Decade-Long Lessons Learned in Project Management Education By John Cable and Clara Cheung


  1. Encourage student-faculty contact
  2. Encourage collaborative learning
  3. Encourage active learning 
  4. Give prompt feedback
  5. Emphasise time on task
  6. Set and communicate high expectations
  7. Respect diverse talents and ways of learning
  8. Make use of technology 

REF: Love, C. (2015) SAMR: A model without evidence [Online]. Available at https://charlielove.org/?p=10025 (Accessed 9 November 2017).

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Adding slides in a second screen to support video using Planet eStream

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A slide show can be synchronised to run alongside a linear video using Planet eStream. The slides might reinforce what is being said, or ask questons. I would like a clearer two screen display with images side by side though.

This is a way to make content and interaction accessible for those who would struggle with smaller text and tricky tools to activate and complete an interactive quiz.

 

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G Suite for Education

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Saturday, 14 Apr 2018, 06:56

 

 

Delight at finding the OU has activated G Suite for education. I am well through training to be a Google Educator Level 1 (Certified).  Its impact and benefits are huge, not least replacing most the of current platforms used by the OU. 

This is my account - activated 9 days. I have been Google since the start, transferring to Docs, Slides and Sheets to rid my life of hideous Word, PowerPoint and Excel. It has grown gently from a basic and easy to use set of Apps, to a suite of simple to use, intuitive and connected tools that create the most versatile of learning set-ups.

'Sites' the blog platform could see off this environment I am working in now. This would be a mistake. I rave to colleagues about the affordances of this space because as well as being a blog, it is really a threaded conversation too. 

You can always find someone to talk to smile 

 

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On being nowhere and everywhere

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This journey is a three decades old; I was using technology-enhanced kit as a 17 year old when I sat myself in front of a Sony reel to reel set up used for interviewing technique, looked at the result then made a video on how to produce a slide show.

It staggers me than 30 years on a slide show online is considered to be innovative or even an advance on what was available in the 1970s.

In 1985 Abbey National were sending carousels of slides around branches to inform staff of what was going on; I was part of the company that turned this into video.

Come the late 1990s what happens?

We’re back to slide shows online, better known as the basic website. Far from seeing an advance in communications standards a good deal of the last twenty years has been the equivalent of treading water, efforts to put online what we did person to person, face to face.

The revelation is that with Web 3.0 technology, social networking, online all the time, available to communicate and so learn, to share, whether vicariously, as participant or providing, linking to or creating content all we are achieving is what is done in the real world x10000 … because you don’t have to be there.

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