Assignment 2: Creating a Multimedia Enhanced Student Activity

My lesson is based on a conversation I had with a colleague, prior to spring break.  We discussed the use of our 10 new iPads and the best way to introduce them to our students, who attend our program on a weekly basis for 2 hours.  We will also be hosting our board trustees later in May and thought it might be fun to showcase our school somewhat, using these iPads and our students and create some trailers explaining “Why we love VLearn” to share with our visitors.  Our conversation lasted all of 10 minutes, with a quick tutorial and look around the app.  My intention behind this lesson was to scaffold the steps required to teach our students how to use this app, as well as become more familiar with the technology myself to be more of a teacher, and less of a student during the lesson.  Following the “multimedia principle”, a term coined by authors Fletcher and Tobias (2005) and Mayer (2009) where “people can learn more deeply from words and pictures than from words alone” (385) I’ve created a multimedia enhanced lesson to teach our students how to use iMovie and make their very own trailer, as well as develop concrete evidence to convince our trustees that we have one of the best blended home school programs in the country.  

With this background knowledge of my intentions, it can be clearly observed that I believe in “technologies viewed as causal agents determining our uses and having a pivotal role in social change” (Kanuka, 2008, 97) as technological determinism philosophy dictates.  Rather than detract from students learning experience like some believe technological determinism does, I hope the iPad adventure will motivate and engage students.  Coming from more of a humanist teaching perspective, “to support individual growth and self-actualization” (106), I hope students will gain collaboration skills, self-confidence, and technical skills in this lesson.  “The act of learning is a personal activity that involves intrinsic motivation, self-concept, perception, and self-evaluation” (107).  My lesson is structured based on these concepts.

Using the new BC curriculum Applied Design, Skills and Technology objectives as well as the Communication Competencies, I highlight targeted learning outcomes in my lesson plan.  Students are being asked to think critically about what they like about their school, work collaboratively with their peers, and reflect shared ideas, using iMovie.  “To think with multimedia is to use multimedia to explore ideas and to communicate them” (Rockwell and Mactavish, 2004).  My role is “that of facilitator, helper, and partner in the learning process… creating the conditions within which learning can take place” (107).  Self-determination of learning is critical.  Freedom of “choice, minimizing controls, acknowledging feelings, and making available information that is needed for decision making and for performing the target task” (Deci, et. al, 1991, 342), is embedded in the structure and students will gain mastery with practice and support.  I also hope that they will have a lot of fun doing it.

I look forward to trying this lesson in April and will happily give you feedback about how it goes.  I still need to think more about assessment – self-assessment would be good and I would like to generate the criteria with the students as a part of the lesson.  I have included a link to Kathy Schrock’s website and think we will use rubric 12 – iMovie rubric to evaluate our students projects.

References:

Deci,. E. , Vallerand, R., Pelletier, L. & Ryan, R. (1991).  Motivation and Education: The Self-Determination Perspective.  In Educational Pshychologist, 26  (3&4), 325-346.

Kanuka, H. (2008). Understanding E-Learning Technologies-in-practice through Philosophies-in-Practice. In Theory and Practice of Online Learning (Chap. 4).  Retrieved from:http://cde.athabascau.ca/online_book/second_edition.html

Mayers, R. (2014).  Multimedia Instruction. In Handbook of Research on Educational Communications and Technology. Retrieved from: http://moodle.tru.ca/pluginfile.php/433572/mod_resource/content/1/mayer-multimedia-instruction.pdf

Rockwell, G. & Mactavish, A. (2004).  A Companion to Digital Humanities, ed. Susan Schreibman, Ray Siemens, John Unsworth. Oxford: Blackwell, 2004.  http://www.digitalhumanities.org/companion/