The virtual classroom is really catching on in the U.S. with more than two million K-12 students taking classes online as an alternative and flexible way of learning.
In California, Governor Jerry Brown strongly supports this move away from the traditional classroom. He sees online college courses as a way to deal with the problem of overcrowded classrooms and hopes that through providing low-cost online classes, education will become more affordable for students. With this in mind, he is fostering partnerships between online learning programs and higher education, such as the partnership between San Jose State University and the startup Udacity. In his budget, he has allocated $17 million for community colleges and $10 million each for the UC and Cal State systems to expand online learning.
Last week's Do Now investigated this issue of online learning. We asked students if they felt that online learning better suits their needs or would it come at a cost. The responses were very mixed. Read below to from high school students as they discuss the advantages and disadvantages of taking courses online.
What are the advantages or disadvantages of taking courses online? Would you prefer that classes be given online or in person? Please explain your thoughts.
Introduction
The virtual classroom is really catching on in the U.S. with more than two million K-12 students taking classes online as an alternative and flexible way of learning.
In California, Governor Jerry Brown strongly supports this move away from the traditional classroom. He sees online college courses as a way to deal with the problem of overcrowded classrooms and hopes that through providing low-cost online classes, education will become more affordable for students. With this in mind, he is fostering partnerships between online learning programs and higher education, such as the partnership between San Jose State University and the startup Udacity. In his budget, he has allocated $17 million for community colleges and $10 million each for the UC and Cal State systems to expand online learning.
But as KQED’s MindShift points out in Where is Technology Leading Higher Education?, these dramatic changes in teaching and learning practices are traumatic for colleges. They are struggling to keep up with the pace of change. “Terms like historic, seismic and revolutionary now pop up in descriptions of the challenges that higher education faces in the coming years.”
Reuter's post Online schools face backlash as states question results claims that in many states, Maine, New Jersey and North Carolina, there has been a backlash with educators and officials questioning and challenging standards in the new cyber-schools.
Today, science demands sophisticated skills not generally taught as part of standard science curricula. Ideally, science instructional strategies teach a body of knowledge and cultivate other abilities required for the practice of science. For example the scientific community values collaboration and teamwork, critical and focused observation, the use of technology for data collection, evaluation of information, and communication skills. All of these skills can be cultivated through the use of media making projects. For this reason, student media-making projects are an excellent way to introduce these 21st century proficiencies.
A good first-step media project to use with students is a narrated slideshow. The programs used to make one are relatively simple and students can either take their own photos or find properly licensed images on the web in addition to using their own voice to narrate the story. KQED has developed a new tool for educators to assist in the understanding of how to create a slideshow as well as the implementation of such a project in the science classroom.
Earlier this week, Ed Tech Times posted an insightful infographic about the power of video in education. It was produced by Cisco to accompany their recently published white paper.
KQED and PBS are facilitating a free webinar training, "Educating with PBS LearningMedia" the third Thursday of each month at 4:30 PM. Participants will explore how to engage students in media-rich learning experiences with the next generation digital media service, PBS LearningMedia. In a 30 minute training, educators will learn the ropes around this robust library of research-based core curriculum digital resources. And as an added bonus, school supply giftcards will be raffled off during each training.
PBS LearningMedia is the next generation digital library from PBS and affiliates designed for educators to engage students in media-rich learning environments with videos, audio, and interactives. With over 20,000 resources, and more being added weekly, LearningMedia is the place to reimagine classroom learning, transform your teaching, and engage your students in new ways.
There are many ways to go about searching for different resources, but what are the most effective ways to use this library? Here are my top 5 favorites from a list of ten ways suggested by Iowa Public TV to incorporate PBS LearningMedia into teaching.
There are a number of necessary skills that are essential to learning the process of making slideshows with audio. Like most multimedia productions, we can organize these skills into a common workflow or process which can be organized into three phases: pre-production, production, and post-production. We will review these phases and point you to some excellent resources that can be of great assistance.
Pre-production
The process begins with pre-production. During this time, the media producer develops the concept or idea. It should be time to brainstorm the purpose of the project, its message or argument, the intended audience, and perhaps the structure. It's always a good idea to research other multimedia projects that may inspire or influence the work. This worksheet (Media Planning Worksheet) is a great way to get started with a slideshow project. This worksheet can also help educators create a focused project assignment in thinking about what is required of students. In the classroom, it's a good idea to get students to use this worksheet and come up with a paragraph explanation or synopsis of their project along with perhaps an understanding of what they will need to record and what they will need to acquire from the internet or outside sources. Once the planning and understanding of the project concept is established, pre-production also includes developing storyboards (Storyboard Template), shot lists, and even a list of URLs of media resources like images and/or sounds. All of this work should culminate into a script where the media producer knows exactly what will be seen (visual material) vs. what will be heard (sound). If there is a voice-over narration that accompanies the project, then this is the time to write what that voice-over narration will be and to match images to the various parts of the narration. Here's a script template to use during this process. And here's an example of how the script looks from one of our QUEST slideshow scripts.
Production
Once the script is complete, that marks the end of pre-production. The script is the blueprint for the project, but it does not mean that it cannot change. The media producer should allow flexibility during the process as some ideas do not seem to make sense or feasible once production begins or some ideas give way to better ideas.
During production, the media producers record or find all the necessary media assets for the project -- images and sounds. Some images may be found online, some may be shot by the media producer either in the past or for this specific project. Likewise with sound, there may be sounds that will be found online or recorded. For example, most likely the media producer will record the narration. That means this process includes any combination of the following: downloading online images, taking pictures, scanning images, downloading online sound effects or music, and recording voice-over narration.
Here's a great worksheet (Media Log for Slideshows) to use while finding media online. It helps the media producer log the assets that may be used in the project. Most importantly, it references or cites where images and sounds where found so that the sources can be included in the end credits as a list of citations. This is very important if you are using material that is copyrighted.
This worksheet (Slideshow Resources) lists a bunch of good resources and tips before beginning a project. It includes links to various tutorials for video editing software or sound recording applications, as well as tips for how to take good quality photos.
File Management
It is best to prepare a project folder on your computer's desktop. Inside the folder the media producer should have two other folders - one for images and the other for sounds and music. Here's a great video educast that explains the process of doing this for a Mac and using iMovie.
Using iMovie
Part of production includes working with iMovie to record your voice-over narration. Here's are two great video educasts that presents a basic overview of iMovie and how to create/record audio narration. (Note: this is a playlist that hosts 2 videos).
Production ends once all of your images and sounds are imported into GarageBand and iTunes, and you have recorded your voice-over narration.
Post-Production
Post-production is the process of crafting and sequencing your images and sounds in iMovie or your video editing program of choice. This does not mean that you can't redo your voice-over narration or go out and record or collect more images. It is quite common to back to production once in post-production. It involves developing a rough cut which is like a rough draft of your project --This version may look as such: the media producer has put the images in a sequence - maybe not all the images, maybe not timed to the right rhythm or pacing, maybe no effects or transition or music. Eventually, the media producer works to finesse this project by adding or subtracting the length of each image in the sequence; adding effects to the images; adding transitions; adding titles; adding music; mixing the sound levels. Finally, once the project is finished, it is ready to be exported and published.
Here are a series of videos that explain how to do all of these techniques in iMovie. (Note: this is a playlist that hosts 5 videos)
In our final Teacher Tech Training for the Summer, teachers learned how to create a slideshow with sound. They created Digital Postcards, similar to Audio Postcards, but now with images to accompany the soundtrack. They used the free web application JayCut to produce their projects. For many of the participants who came to our previous workshop were able to use their audio postcards as the foundation for their project. They only needed to then search for images that matched their narration and sequence them. For those who joined us for the first time had to write a narration script and record it into JayCut -- the application allows you to record audio directly from your computer. Pretty cool.
Here are the results of our teachers. Very awesome work!
There are a ton of slideshow programs out there online. Some are better than others. Most are free, but be aware of those that claim they are free and then ask you to pay a fee once you've registered to use their site. Below, you can view a chart that lists a number of applications that are either software or hosted online. You can see if they incorporate sound and text, and whether they are free or there is a fee. (click on the table to see a larger version)
Today's workshop focuses on JayCut, an online video editing system that is great for audio slideshows. It's much like Windows Movie Maker and iMovie, but since it's online, it's great to teach. There is only one version and it doesn't matter if you use a Mac or a PC.
The only quirk is that you have to upload all of your media content (there actually is an option to use your computer's microphone to record audio and another option to record video from your computer's camera...but we won't talk about that now). To do this, you will first have to collect all of your images and audio first. If you are taking images online through a Google image search, then you will have to first download the images, save them in a folder on your computer, then upload the images to your JayCut account. Here's a quick workflow for the process of creating an audio slideshow once you have recorded your audio in Audacity and have exported it as a WAV or AIFF file.
Go to www.jaycut.com
Register on the site.
Create a movie
Select a language
Click "add media" on the upper right corner.
Click on "my computer" and click "next."
Click "browse"
Find the media files from your computer, select them and click "open."
Click "upload." (Note: sometimes there is a green check and other times there is a red x after uploading. Ignore it.)
Click the little gray x on the upper right corner of that window.
You should now be able to view your media in its proper tab -- (ex. -- if it's an image, it should be located in the image tab.)
The second round of teacher tech trainings introduces educators to sound recording and design for creating audio podcasts as a tool for learning elementary science. Teachers become familiar to different elements of sound, how to record narration, search for sounds online via google searching or downloading mp3 files from YouTube, and then using Audacity as a audio sequencer.
The in-class activity was for each participant to create an "audio postcard" of a natural place that is meaningful to her or him. They were to write a script that includes narration and two sound effects to enhance the podcast.
Here are the results from our participants. Most of them are still works in progress, but you will get an sense of what each educator is aiming to highlight.
Do Now is a weekly activity for students to respond to current issues through the use KQED's award-winning online media resources and social media tools like Twitter.
