When thinking about transliteracy and my capstone project, our discussions helped me focus on how to convey my findings in a way that hopefully is clear and easy to follow. I feel that I learned a lot about how different mediums can change the same message, the importance of layout and color, how to create a video that flows (hopefully) in a way that keeps people engaged long enough for me to share my findings, etc... I think that what our discussions around transliteracy did more than anything was bring an awareness around how people interpret messages, and it also made me think of the connection between marketing and education. It makes me think that in order to be a good marketer, you really need to understand your audience, how they receive information, how they engage with it, and then try and figure out if you were effective in getting your message across. As educators, we need to basically follow that same model. I think that as a move forward with my career, I will take this new focus as I develop new lessons for my students. This will be especially helpful as we are implementing brand new standards this year, and there are lessons that I will have to build to cover those new lessons. We talk a lot about clarity in our district, and I think that these discussions around transliteracy will help me be a better teacher moving forward.
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Not a lot has changed since my last blog. I replaced a few pictures at the end with some from my classroom and ones that I created rather than using the pictures from the Adobe Spark site. I also changed a few things based on some feedback that Sam gave me about the opening slide. Overall I feel pretty happy with the product. It was definitely a lot more work than I anticipated when I first started this project. I figured that it would take a couple of hours to put it together but it turned out being way more than that. Hopefully it does a good job of explaining what I discovered through my research in the short time that we had in the video. At this point I think I am pretty much done, and have uploaded the current version to my site.
I feel that I have a pretty good idea of what I want from my video at this point. Being able to see some of the other videos also gave me some good ideas that I might add into the final version before it's due. I really liked seeing some of the other cohort members using their classrooms in their videos, and want to incorporate that into my video more as well. My final steps are to change the initial slide from black and white to color and to change my final 3 slides from Adobe Spark pictures to ones from my classroom. I have already got one of the pictures changed, and really just need to get the others from my classroom in the next few days. Overall I am pretty happy with the way that it is turning out so far, and look forward to finishing it over the course of the next week.
When I started making my video, I knew that it was going to be difficult. I was worried about a couple of things as I was thinking about what I wanted to include. The first one was the time constraint. I have so much information to include, it was difficult fitting it all into a 90 second video. I knew that I wanted it to read like a story, address the struggle that both teachers and students were having, and hopefully offer up some solutions. I feel that I was able to address those in my video, but am still a little unsure if I am happy with the way the images and story convey the message. The second thing that I was worried about was how the video was going to look. I am about as far away as you could be when it comes to being a video editor. I am still a little concerned about how it looks, but know that I have time to change anything that I'm not happy with over the next few weeks. Overall, it has been challenging to get it to look the way I want it to. With it being one of the first things that someone would see when visiting my site, I know the importance that the video plays. Hopefully in the end it will be a product that I am happy with.
This has definitely been a difficult process for me. Being creative with things like is usually a struggle. But I understand that this is a fluid process. What I created a few days ago will probably change multiple times before I settle on a final product that I am happy with. I do know that I want my video to read like a story. I want to be able to show that a problem exists, and then be able to offer up some strategies/solutions to help solve it. I also think that most people who look through the site will probably click on the video. It isn't much of a time commitment for readers, so an effective video will hopefully build enough interest that they will want to continue reading.
The editor I decided to use was Adobe Spark. I spent a few hours on trying to learn how to use the other sites. The one that I spent the most time on was the WeVideo site. I watched different tutorials but really struggled through using it effectively. As soon as I started to think that I got the hang of it, I changed something unintentionally and became more frustrated with the process. I was spending a lot of time trying to learn how the site, rather than working on building the structure and adding content. I decided to use Spark due to having used it the past, and really liking the way that it looks when videos are completed. I just think that with all of work that we have to complete moving forward, my time is better spent working on building content rather than learning how to use a site that is new to me. I also learned how to upload my own videos into Spark, which I think will allow me different options as I get closer to a finished product. I'm glad I got the chances to see these other sites, and will probably try and figure out a way to use them in the future, but for now I think that Adobe Spark will allow me to create a video that I am happy with in the end. Creating the logo turned out to be more difficult than I thought. I must have gone through 5 different sites before I settled on Canva. Due to a bunch of different reasons (low resolution image, cost, difficulty navigating, etc...), it took me some time to settle on one that I liked. Canva offered a lot of options in regards to the images and templates, and was relatively easy to use. It also allowed for the image to be shared and downloaded easily, which was helpful when trying to share it with other sites.
As I mentioned above, the process of creating my logo, the current one anyway, was more time consuming than I anticipated. I started by sketching out some rough drawings on a piece of paper. After a while I thought that I had a logo that I was happy with. Once I went to put it into the different sites, it looked different than how I thought it would for some reason. At that point, I got rid of my original ideas and went in a totally different direction. I ended up with two different logos, each one totally different than the other one. I am hoping to get some feedback on what I created, and then will alter them from there. Because this image will be shown throughout my site, I want to make sure the image connects well with my research. Overall, the experience was a lesson in patience for me. Like I mentioned above, I thought for some reason that would be a quick process. I also know that I am only in the initial part of creating my logo, and that what I have now will not be what I have in the end. It seems like such an easy thing, but when you factor in all that goes into it, it's a much more detailed process than it seems at first. Even after all of our discussions, readings, and researching different sites, I am still surprised in how much goes into creating a logo. Over the last few months, we have talked a lot about who our audience will be. This has always been tough for me to specifically identify. As a teacher I have always benefited from being able to steal other peoples ideas and alter them in a way that I thought would benefit my students. When we first started this idea of an end user, my initial thought was the students would be. I have come to understand that while the beneficiary of my growth will ultimately be my students, the capstone design and structure needs to be created to a different audience.
As I began to look through the different sites, I saw the projects that had a very clear vision of who their audiences were. They did a good job of stating it early, and then revisiting it consistently throughout the site. I think that my audience will specifically science teachers who are trying to navigate their way through the new expectations that NGSS has placed on students. While my original round of research wasn't statistically significant, the gains that they made were large enough for me to see the value in the feedback process on student achievement in science. I have really started to use feedback more in my classroom this year, and have seen the benefit it has on students understanding the content better than they have in the past. As I create my capstone project, I will try and use some of those exemplary ones as a guide to make sure that it is as clear as possible to my specific audience. As I begin to plan my learn more pages, the thing that really sticks out to me is clarity. The opening page should clearly state the need and a brief summary of what my findings were. There will need to be clear visuals that are easy to read, and possible short media clips that help expand on my ideas. The user will need simple instructions on how to use different digital platforms, and how best to leverage them to create student engagement and achievement. My research should be clear and to the point. I have to find a way to summarize them in a way that doesn't get too lengthy and difficult to understand. I also need to find a way to add different lessons/strategies that other teachers could use if they wanted to implement some of this in their own classroom. When I think of the meaning of transliteracy, I am reminded how quickly the world around us is changing. The amount of information that is available to students is on a scale that humankind has never seen. I read somewhere that students are able to absorb and learn more information in a week by reading the NYT, than the average person living in 1850 would come across in their entire lifetime. The challenge then moving forward is, how do students learn to analyze and shift from expectation to expectation as seamlessly as possible? How do students keep up with all of the digital platforms that are becoming part of our daily lives? How do we teach them "traditional" learning, and blend it with the a quickly evolving digital age that allows them to not only understand but communicate their learning to other people?
My thoughts about technology have changed quite a bit in the last 8 months. I have been exposed to enough information through text, videos, and discussions to see that part of my job now is helping students become transliterate. Students still need to be able to read content through traditional methods like articles and textbooks. But that isn't enough anymore. The importance of digital literacy is more important than ever. Students are exposed to so much information now, without knowing how to truly filter through it. Students used to find information that was vetted through editors, now anybody with a phone can put whatever information on the internet. Students need to know how spot the "fake news" and identify credible sources of information. Students need to know how information that they put online could hurt them in the future. They need to learn the importance of things like graphic design so that they can create presentations (for work, school, church, etc...) so that what they are trying to communicate is received in the way that they intended. The list is literally endless. So part of my responsibility moving forward is to be able to blend "traditional" ways of communication (text, email, summaries, etc...) with newer approaches to help model what students will see in the future. What I have come to learn is that all mediums convey information differently, and therefore can be interpreted differently. I need to be mindful of that moving forward. Can I teach similar concepts that I have in the past in a different way that students might better relate to and be more engaged with? Can I take what might have been a written response in the past, and have students create a visual presentation that only includes pictures and audio? Can students then make videos where they give each other feedback without a word written? While I am still a traditionalist in the sense of I feel strongly about the importance of learning to read text, focusing on grammar when they write, and solving math problems without a calculator, I do see the value of being transliterate. Students will be expected to be "fluent" when they are career or college ready. They will need to be able to move seamlessly between textbooks, Twitter, Newsweek articles, and LinkedIn (or something brand new but similar), be able to analyze what they have learned, and communicate their findings in ways that we probably haven't even thought of yet. And this should be done across all contents, all day at school. This shouldn't be left to one department. These are expectations and skills that we all will have to help them develop. |
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November 2018
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