Week 4: Using Video to Convey Information

Week 4: Creating a video

Part 1

I chose to evaluate this video. This instructional video teaches students how to count to 100 by 5’s.  This is appropriate for my kindergarten classroom because it combines learning with movement.  I find this technique to be the most beneficial for students of this age group.  This video would be used for our daily review of counting by 5’s. 

I applied the Ten Factors to Consider When Evaluating a Podcast to this video:

1.    Is the content appropriate for your current area of study?

-Yes, counting by 5’s is a Common Core State Standard.  We review counting by 5’s on a daily basis in order to meet this standard.

2.    Does the video add to or enhance your current lesson plan?

-I believe this video adds to our typical counting by 5’s by adding movement and song.

3.    Does the content and production of the video meet school and community standards for acceptable use in your school?

-Yes, this video meets the CCSS for kindergarten and is appropriate for kindergarten students to view.

4.    Is the content of the video well organized and easy to follow?

-Yes, the video is in order and concise without too much information.

5.    Is the content of the video compelling enough to hold the attention of your audience?

-Yes, the song and dance keeps the attention of kindergarten students and allows them to retain the information in a kinesthetic fashion.

6.    Is the video in a digital format that works in your classroom?

-Yes, it available on YouTube and passes the restrictions placed on certain YouTube content.

7.    Was the video produced by a source you consider credible?

-Yes, Jack Hartmann owns a business that produces numerous educational songs.

8.    Is listening to the video the best method of learning about this topic for your students?

-No, the best learning for the video would be with movement and singing of the students as well.

9.    Is the video supported by additional online content( a website with further resources or archives, for example)?

-Yes, https://www.jackhartmann.com/

1.  Does the video include any usage rights that limit the broadcast or distribution of content?

-There are no restrictions in the classroom for viewing.

I also compared this video to the Instructional Media Design Principles from week 1.  The main principle that I noticed it applied to was the Temporal Contiguity Principle.  This principle discusses that graphics and narration are presented together.  In the video, numbers are presented at the same time the narration/song addresses it.  The Embodiment Principle is also apparent.  The man in the video has human-like gestures with song and dance that children can copy.

Part 3

Lesson: This video was created as a daily reminder of our letters, letter sounds, and letter-sound-word connection.  When students enter kindergarten, they do not all know the letter names or sounds.  This video would be used as a daily review of these prior to our ELA lessons.  I believe it is important to teach students letters and sounds of the alphabet comprehensively, rather than independently. 

Learning Objective:  After this lesson, students will be able to identify and apply the letters and letter sounds to their reading and writing.

Creativity:  I believe creativity is becoming less important in schools.  After leaving my job as a Pre-K teacher and now a kindergarten teacher, this has become more apparent to me.  As the academics become a more important piece, creativity and the arts dwindles.  With that being said, I try to incorporate creativity through art activities in my classroom.  These typically connect with a science unit about animals and the seasons.  As for my own teaching, I am always trying to be creative in my delivery of lessons, I attempt to never deliver lessons in the same exact way each day.  Consistency is important at the young age I teach, but my students and myself get extremely bored with the same thing everyday.  Therefore, I develop new and different ELA activities each week.  When thinking about different multimedia materials, I always think to myself, ‘Would I want to watch this if I was in kindergarten?’  If the answer is no, then I continue to work until I can answer yes to this question.  This is where my creativity comes into play.  Kindergarten age students want to see color and sound together and through creative and different processes, I believe that can be reached.  For pieces of multimedia I discover, I typically ask myself the same question.  Children of this age need stimulation and I select videos to reach this.

Application: This week, I designed my instructional video with the Spacial Contiguity Principle in mind.  This principle’s idea is that printed words and graphics are near each other.  My video has graphics and letters that are close to each other and at times overlap.  My idea behind this is that students will keep a mental picture of this in their mind when they are applying the concept to their ELA activities.  I do not believe my video explicitly allows for creativity.  However, I believe it will lead to creativity in their connection of letter-sounds and words.  My hope is that by introducing students to letter-sound-word connections, they will eventually develop their own words to connect the sounds and letters to. 

Reflection:  I had seen the TED Talk by Sir Ken Robinson prior to this week, but it was a nice refresher on the idea of creativity.  I taught GSRP (Pre-K) for two years before becoming a kindergarten teacher.  I believe the most important concept we had to have in our daily activities was creativity.  All of our activities were required to be open-ended.  This was implemented in order to allow children to be creative in their thought processes and work.  I was able to witness eye-opening work from my students with these open-ended activities.  However, when I went to kindergarten, everything changed.  I feel it is expected that everyone do the same ‘cookie cutter’ projects.  I do my best to keep this ‘open-ended’ concept, but when it comes to the academic portions, it is not always available.  While creating this instructional media, I noticed I was very focused on using images that were Public Domain.  Prior to this course, I would say I didn’t really pay attention to copyright laws.  However, I am happy I have become more aware as I believe it could have had negative consequences eventually.

Week 3: Digital Images

Gif was created using makeagif. Youtube video:Hitesh Gusani, "Timelapse Butterfly Coming Out of Pupa," via Youtube, June 4, 2012, Creative Commons Attribution,

Original image was taken from Wikipedia: "Butterfly", May 10, 2016, Public domain.

Butterfly Image was taken from Pixaby.com: "Butterfly," April 22, 2016, Public Domain
Other Images: Picktochart

Lesson: Digital images are helpful for kindergarten students to have a visual representation of the information they are learning about.  With these different images, I plan to show students different aspects of butterflies, including: their body structures, life cycle, and interesting facts about butterflies.  This will be spread out throughout the week.  After they have seen and discussed this information, they will write a sentence about anything they have learned about butterflies as well as draw a picture to represent their sentence.

Objective: After this lesson, students will be able to recall visual and auditory information about butterflies to demonstrate their learning.

Application: The design principles from week 1 apply to both my lesson plan and digital images.  Two aspects I focused on were the Coherence Principle and the Segmenting Principle.  For my lesson plan and digital images, I applied the Coherence Principle by reducing extraneous processing by eliminating extra information that does not focus on the topic at hand.  For example, my lesson is spread out throughout the week with different topics on different days.  Spreading out this information allows for students to focus exactly on the days information without overstimulation.  For my digital images, I included information and pictures only relevant to our topics.  For example, my GIF focuses on the metamorphosis of the butterfly from the chrysalis.  This allows us to talk specifically about this stage of the life cycle without including extra irrelevant information.  I applied the Segmenting Principle in my lesson plan by breaking up the information into separate days, this allows students to focus on different aspects of butterflies on separate days.  For my GIF, I segmented the life cycle of a butterfly into different stages, this GIF focused on the metamorphosis into an adult butterfly.  I believe that breaking down the life cycle into different GIFs would be really helpful for students to focus on the different aspects of the life cycle. 

Reflection:  Before reading about access, I would identify myself as a person that lacked awareness.  Although, I have been educated through my education classes on educating those with disabilities, I haven’t had a student with an impairment in my classroom.  Therefore, I never really applied access principles into my classroom.  However, I realized that as a teacher of kindergarten students, their computer capabilities are limited and I need to adapt my lessons and information to meet their needs.  I feel this applied to the idea of access.  I really enjoyed making the digital images this week.  Although, I believe I am tech savvy, I just never had an interest in creating images.  After this week, I believe I will use digital images more often, especially GIFs.  GIFs are a perfect way to show students little snippets of information you want them to focus on without showing long videos.  

Week 2 Padlet Blog: Health and Nutrition for Children

Lesson:  This Padlet was created for parents of students in my classroom.  My students constantly come to school without breakfast or with lunches that include drinks and food with high amounts of sugar.  I developed this in order to provide parents with resources for better nutrition and health for their child.  Parents will use the resources on Padlet to discover different areas of nutrition and health. These areas include: overall nutrition, proper portion sizes, sugary drinks effect on children, childhood obesity prevention, school lunch improvements, ways WIC has helped mothers in need, physical activity for children, and tips for packing healthier lunches. 

Learning Objective:  After this lesson, parents will be able to apply the nutrition information in their household in order to promote a healthier lifestyle.

Copyright:  For my kindergarten students, the overall concept of copyright is very difficult to understand.  In order to help them understand the general idea, I would discuss how people work very hard to create something they are proud of and how they wouldn’t want someone else to take credit for their work.  I would then discuss a scenario that makes sense for them.  I would ask them how they would feel if someone else took credit for a picture they worked really hard on to draw.  This would allow my students to understand that it is important not to steal others work and claim it as your own.

Application: With this assignment, I used the Segmenting and Personalization Principles I explored in week 1.  I had a large range of topics I wanted to cover and I felt that choosing multimedia that covered the same material would be overwhelming for the learning and they wouldn’t be able to focus on certain aspects one at a time.  By segmenting the topics, I feel the learner can deeply dive into the topics without too much extra information.  I also chose multimedia I felt fit the Personalization Principle applied to.  I did not want multimedia with words that were not understandable by parents.  This allows for parents to interact with the multimedia in ways they understand without formal words they may not be able to interpret into their own life. 

Reflection:  After this assignment, I realized I didn’t know as much about copyright as I once believed.  There are many components to copyright that I was able to explore through this assignment.  When reflecting back on the principles from week 1, I realized I utilized the Segmenting Principle without really knowing it.  I separated the topic into different categories because I felt it would be easier to learn this way, while reflecting I was able to realize this.  I believe I am very sufficient in technology, I found the Padlet website to be a little difficult for me to navigate at first.  I learn better by exploring on my own, but I realized quickly that this website was not going to be the case.  After watching the tutorial provided, I was able to use the website easily.  I hope to use Padlet in the future and learn more about it.

Created with Padlet

Getting to Know Me

Hi!  My name is Ellen and I am working on my Master's Degree in Educational Technology.  I went to CMU for my undergraduate degree in education and I am excited to receive my MA from there as well.

I am currently a Kindergarten teacher in Detroit.  This is my first year teaching kindergarten.  Previously, I taught GSRP (At-Risk Pre-k) in Traverse City, Michigan.  I decided to move to the Detroit area to be closer to family and friends.

Right now, I am training for the Detroit Half-Marathon in October.  I do not love running, but I know I can do it!

I am excited to learn more ways to integrate technology into the classroom and work with all of you!