The below video is for Primary 4 Students to learn how to create a chart on a graph paper.
Click to play the Video…
My Digital Story Telling experience and reflections:
Choose a series of photos from a desired topic
The above step is done by filtering some outstanding and (representative) photos
These photos act as “key-frames” or the “backbone” of the story
Use the above “key-frames” to guide the reader thru the whole story
The sequence of the photo is important, as it represents the time (order) of the events
Nevertheless, this is the first time I produce a digital photo story. In addition, this is the first time I use a digital photo story in teaching (I haven’t think of it before!) <– It is very interesting.
I think I will make more Digital Stories for teaching in the future.
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My Design Tips / Rationales:
A Title screen is necessary for the audience to know the main theme or the objective of the lesson movie.
Avoid unnecessary zoom-in and zoom-out. Otherwise, they will cause the audience become fainted when watching the video.
Background music is only used in the title screen and the ending screen. This acts as a signal for the audience to know the beginning and the end of the movie.
Background music is NOT used during the teaching process is to avoid distracting the audience. (Reference: Mayer, R.E. and Moreno , R. (2002). Animation as an Aid to Multimedia Learning. Educational Psychology Review. 14(1): 87-98)
About the Link…
The Dragonwise Project II (by HKU) has produced a great platform in demonstrating the “Stroke Sequence” (筆順) of Chinese Characters. (click the below links)
The Stroke Sequence of “大” — “Big”
The Dragonwise Homepage containing different Characters.
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Suggested Actions…
In the above example of “大” — “Big”:
you may try to click on a stroke in wrong stroke sequence
after a few “wrong clicks”, the system will show the “correct stroke sequence”
then, you should click on that stroke
at the same time, you should click on that stroke at the correct beginning point
The above designs impressed me (positively) very much!
Planning Process
(The above screen is captured from Dr. Churchill’s PPT Slide)
(The words in Red is the captions recorded by myself.)
This planning process is more or less like what we have done in the previous tasks:
introducing myself
atmosphere task
raindrop task
in which, the atmosphere task and the raindrop task require me to spend more time on:
collect information
learn the content
The Planning process helps me to plan on my final assignment.
I know more on what should I do, and what should I think of in planning and producing a multimedia interactive visual material
Storyboard
In Google, by typing "define: storyboard" and choose "Images", many storyboard examples are shown. (click here to see…)
It provides different definitions of "storyboard" (in text or images) for me to learn and compare with different definitions
Storyboard are frequently used in film, video or cartoon making
In my opinion, storyboard are useful in designing the below materials as well:
animations
interactions
films
Flash Techniques learnt
Applying interactivity and visual representation on a single-screen
Controlling a movie clip:
On release: tellTarget (movieclip_name), gotoAndplay(2) [frame 1 with the action ¡§stop¡¨]
On rollout: tellTarget(movieclip_name), gotoAndplay(1) [frame 1 with the action ¡§stop¡¨]
Keyframes in a Movie Clip work like a library of information (as a framework in Authorware)
Using gotoAndplay(n) n is the nth frame you want to show
Not ALL the Flash functions are needed in fact. Just focus on:
the Frame and Movie Clip control functions and
the Mouse detection function is enough.
Other skills learnt
I have learnt some Internet Searching Skills in Google
I have learnt a new way in typing in keyword, "define: XXXXX" (where XXXXX) is the keyword you would like to know the definition
After I have read the "Advanced Search" in Google, I found that, this is called a domain search.
In fact, there are much more "advanced search" techniques
http://www.google.com.hk/intl/en/help/refinesearch.html
Yahoo! has tried an interesting way of presenting information,
which is similar to the “News Headlines” example shown in Lecture #1
click to see the real Yahoo! results…
click the above picture to view in full size…
Kenneth and me are going to do a project call Solar System.
Kenneth’s background:
- teaching in a secondary school
- teaching Computer and Maths.
Patrick’s (my) background:
- teaching in a Primary school
- teaching Computer, General Studies and Maths.
We found that it is hard to find a project to fit our students together.
So we choose this topic because most of the students like extra-curricula, which they cannot usually reach.
In this project, we will mainly use flash to write.
The project will show the model and the dimension of the solar system.
Student can click on the planets and find the explanation.
It also shows the principle of the solar and lunar eclipse.
At the end, there is a small quiz to test the pupils.
In addition it will become an E-Learning environment (Webquest), which is including 4 key elements: (Quoted from D. Churchill, EDUC7044, Jan 2005, Rase.ppt)
resources,
activities,
support, and
evaluation.
After I have done the “Rain Drop” Task, I have the below reflections:
• As visual form representation gives audience a quick and important “first impression”, the correctness of the information represented is vital
• The importance of the above point is illustrated by the “shape of rain drop” example.
• The tear-drop shaped rain drop gives most people (including me) a wrong concept which influences people mental model.
• In fact, we should think of if any other sources are available. e.g. by video taping the raindrop / water-drop, i.e. doing experiment)
• When designing such a visual representation, we should think of the ways in presenting the idea in an audience-suitable form and suitable level of expertise, e.g. for the primary school students.
• During the data collection and verification process, people tend to rely mostly or solely on the internet in searching for information.
Reflection on the process in doing the “Rain Drop” Task…
• Much time spent in collecting information (with filtering, judging, comparing) and criticizing the correctness of the web information
• I am having
inadequate self-knowledge about Physics and Mathematics makes me
difficult to judge the correctness of the web information.
• After the data collection and filtration process, I have to spend some time to think of the storyboard (designing how to represent the idea + filtering the important data)
• In addition, the technical issue (e.g. using flash or other graphical tools) troubles me a lot. (But I think I will soon overcome!)
•
This task gives me an initiation on “creating curiosity to a problem” and this is the ultimate driving force
for me to keep interest and motivation to find more supportive evidence. And through this process,
I (and the students) learn actively
Recommendations on the “Rain Drop” animation
(The above screen is quoted from the PPT slide produced by Dr. Churchill)
• A slide-bar can be included in the Flash movie for the student to see the change of size of raindrop causing the change in shape. (Increasing the interactivity — immediate cause-and-effect visualization)
• Also other variables or factors are also be included (e.g. pressure, wind speeds at different heights) and corresponding slide-bars should be included.
“People can learn more deeply from words and pictures than from words alone”. (It is possibly because the learner can look at similar information twice – and in two different aspects or representation of data.)
Multimedia for learning should be designed in light of how the human mind works, (otherwise, people cannot understand it or can’t interpret immediately)
As Multimedia Representations as cognitive aids, (the key issue is: How can we design representations to aid human cognition)
Learning is a sense making process.(sense making means making relationships between different pieces of information or prior knowledge)
Reflection on the “Rain Drop” Task
Here is the Rain Drop Animation.
This Animation is produced by Kenneth Chan and Patrick Lai.
Please feel free to leave comments here. Thanks.
Self-Reflections for Lesson #3
Your material should not be only a “teaching” tool, in addition, it should be a learning tool to stimulate students’ interests for them to learn deeper.
For example, a simple calculator can be used for students to investigate a lot of mathematical patterns / numeric trends quickly, e.g. decimal multiplication, addition, divisibility, etc….
The right-angled triangle example also illustrated the above points.
Slide-bar and knobs allows students to change the variables or factors quickly to see the changes / trend rapidly.
Visual information provides “imagination spaces” for the reader to explore and think far beyond the original textual information..
“Every new representation is innovation”
– I agree with this point. It is because, no matter how and where the images and materials are grabbed from the others, the linkages (re-presentation) between these components are the “heart of innovation” of the creator.
The kids’ works about the “atmosphere” shocked me a lot and initiate me to think of “never under-estimating the creativity of children”
Before, I think “Data” seems associating only with “text” and “facts”. But now, I realized that “Data” can also contains “Visual Information”
LO types: (turn data from text mode 
interactive and visual representation)
Building concept map
Exploration (finding relationships between factors / variables)
Practices (Rulers / protractor in measurement)
Simulation of tasks / field trip (sampling soil or water)
LO changed my mind of presenting information using text using visual form.
The LO (Linear Function) included in the PowerPoint is interesting.
Also, it allows audience (including me) to explore on the change-and-effect of the variations of different factors (effective way of presenting changes)
Interesting Examples:
“Map of the Market” Similar to the “News Headline” in Lecture #1 (But it contains more high-level abstraction and interactivity
“GChart” – Similar to Google Earth (but much faster, NO need to install – Web 2.0).
However, it is in a “flat-map” mode, whereas Google Earth is in a “spherical earth mode”
“BBC News Interactive Map of Urban Growth” & “Iran in Maps” – An interactive map allowing interactive indication of facilities. (BBC map includes a time-line and charts)
