While reading the Our Need to Interact post I made several connections to the examples discussed. This post is about current events we are living through, being in a global pandemic and the sudden switch to online learning. For many people including learners and instructors, this was a new learning environment. During a time where we needed connection the most we craved more interaction than we were getting.
I completed a year of online university where it felt like I had to “self-guide” myself how to learn to teach. My program is structured using cohorts and luckily my cohort was a very close knit group of individuals. The switch to online learning for us was uncomfortable and lonely. I have taken many courses via zoom and the ones that I enjoyed and got the most out of were the ones that provided opportunities for breakout room discussions. Breakout room (small group) discussions were the most common example of interactive activity. The classes that seemed like a waste of time, tuition and energy were the ones with little to no connection with the professor. I was convinced for a term that one of my professors was not real and could likely have been a robot. The entire course was asynchronous and I never once saw my professor live and in human form until the very last class. This lack of human connection was, as previously mentioned, uncomfortable and lonely.
I am in the midst of my educational technology journey and have been learning about the benefits to effective multimedia learning. I want to continue learning about this as an educator because it is another means for teaching and learning and who knows if we will all be forced to switch to online learning yet again. I want to make sure I provide opportunities for interaction in technology based settings and never want my own students to feel the disconnection that I did in some of my zoom courses.
The topic my group chose for our interactive learning resource assignment is stress. I found this Youtube Video that covers a lot of the same things as we have planned.
If we decide to include this in our assignment, I would ask the students to have paper and a pencil out while watching. The instructor would pause the video after it says “What are some things that stress you out?” (2:16) and ask the students to create a list of 3-5 of their stressors. At the end of the video ask students to come up with a list of 3-5 things they do to manage their stress. They can then choose to share these and talk with a friend and/or they can submit them to the teacher to receive feedback. If the class was 30 students or less it would not be too much work for the teacher to read these assignments. If the class were larger the teacher might choose to use a different medium to collect their answers such as Answer Garden. To make this activity more inclusive the instructor could turn on the closed captions to help out students who are hard of hearing, or for English language learners.
References:
EDCI 355. (April 5th, 2022). Our Need to Interact. WordPress. Retrieved from https://edtechuvic.ca/edci335/our-need-to-interact/
Mylemarks. (September 3rd, 2020). Stress Management Tips for Kids and Teens! [Video] YouTube. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Nf2Pzcketg
Response to Tony’s blog post
Tony’s blog post is slayed out very clearly which makes it an easy read. I was shocked when I first noticed that the length of the video he chose is over 4 hours! It is a full course on python though which I imagine would take awhile. I would imagine that students would take notes throughout (learner-generated) as Tony mentions while answering the first prompt. I like that Tony connects his answers to his interactive learning design assignment. This leads me to believe that they ended up including this video within their assignment. Having answered question 4 myself I definitely can see how their choice of a final project would become an increasing amount of work for the instructor as the class size increases. I like the idea of having students give peer assessments. This could be based on a set criteria given by the instructor and in the case that the creator disagreed with the peer assessment given, then the instructor would take a closer look.
Response to Meaghan’s blog post
I was excited when I read in Meaghan’s post that she hopes to include similar activities in her future elementary school classroom! I love interacting with fellow educators 🙂 Meaghan suggests a great interactive activity to do after the students have learned about the basics of nutrition. The idea of matching photos of foods with their corresponding category is a great interactive and hands on activity that I can see being very inclusive! For those who are unable to cut and glue they could just match up photos or have them printed on a paper and could draw lines to connect them. Her idea of working in groups is also another way to make this activity a little more social. I agree with Meaghan that the groups should be small I would say pairs or a group of 3 if you have an odd number so that each student gets a chance to contribute.
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