A Guide to Documenting Learning
Page 19
She continued by explaining that after choosing a quote from a chapter, they needed to take a photograph at home (or the appropriate location for the connection) that aids in conveying the personal connection to the selected chapter quote. Each student will then upload the photograph to his or her selected tool and use it as a full-frame background or as a smaller image within the final image.
She concluded the task explanation by conducting a model lesson that demonstrated what needed to take place from start to finish:
Read the chapter.
Select a text-to-self quote.
Take a complimentary photo (she had one ready for the lesson).
Upload the photograph to the selected tool and place onto or in quote card frame.
Overlay the image with the quote and the chapter title, book title, and author information.
Save the file.
Print out a copy of the visual quote card to take to literature-circle discussion time.
Upload saved file appropriately to the class portfolio platform.
Sophia found a quote that made her giggle in Chapter 1 of her selected chapter book: Junie B. Jones Smells Something Fishy. When she read a particular passage, she immediately made a connection to her dog, Dax, and pictured Junie B. Jones lugging him to school in a very large cage for Pet Day. Sophia thought to herself that would be very funny to watch happen.
When she went home that day, she took a photograph of Dax in his crate. She then followed the directions provided by Mrs. Seinhart and created a visual quote card for Chapter 1 that included her photograph, the quote using quotation marks, and the required attribution. She saved her quote card and uploaded the file to her account in the class portfolio platform (see Image 8.11).
During her literature-circle Chapter 1 discussion time, she shared her visual quote card and provided details about her quote selection based on her peers asking her questions related to her visual image and quoted text.
A few tools to create visual quote cards include PicCollage, Typorama, Word Swag, Powerpoint, Keynote, Google Slides, Canva, Piktochart, and Book Creator.
Image 8.11
Image 8.12
Strategy 6: Collages
The last image/photo documentation strategy focuses on using collage creation as an artifact.
A collage is a digital collection of images purposely selected to convey a message on one page or one slide (see Image 8.12). The visual message is supported using concise text. A collage’s images can be grouped in predefined layouts provided by the collage tool (e.g., PicCollage) or arranged freehand (e.g., PowerPoint slide).
Students as primary learners or teachers as secondary learners cluster the connected images and annotate with appropriate information or commentary. Once created, it is saved as one image file, which makes filing, organizing, and retrieving the artifact easier than having to keep track of the independent image files included in the collage.
The possibilities for creating artifact collages are endless with a little imagination. For example:
When studying the life cycle of insects in a primary grade, instead of filling out a pre-printed worksheet or hand-drawing illustrations or diagrams of the different life stages, the students can begin by locating online copyright-friendly images (or take their own photographs, if possible). Next, with or without adult assistance, they will unpack the images to create a collage artifact starting with combining and arranging the images and then adding the annotations to convey their key learning points about the insect’s life cycle.
Middle schoolers and high schoolers can use collages to enhance lab reports by collecting their own observations via photographs and screenshots they believe have brought them closer to confirming or disproving a current claim for an iterative phenomenon model.
World language students can create photographic collages to share cultural folk-tales they have adapted to modern times.
Music students can visualize the emotional trajectory of a melody or song by creating photo-collage interpretations of the music and/or lyrics.
Math students can find real-world examples of mathematical concepts they are studying and create collages to capture and document the authentic situations.
Each educator observing a model lesson by a teacher can arrange some of the photographs captured during the observation and create a collage with annotations as evidence of learning to use during the post-lesson debriefing session with colleagues, principal, and facilitator.
A few collage tools include PicCollage, PicStitch, and Diptic, PowerPoint, Keynote, and Google Slides.
Summing Up
It is important to realize that text and visual platforms and tools are being invented and/or upgraded continuously. For example, while it was not featured in the visual-documentation section, an emerging platform is Pinterest.
This social-network worldware platform has steadily increased in popularity outside and inside education. Its key draw is that users can go window shopping by searching and scanning like-category images (and videos) based on a topic, idea, or concept. Users can upload their own images (pins) and pin others’ pins to their boards in a customizable, organized fashion.
Given Pinterest’s capabilities to upload, organize, share, and amplify the reach of images coupled with providing descriptions and links to further information (increasing the sharing degree of amplification), educators are using this platform as a way in which to curate their classroom and professional learning opportunities. It is what a student or teacher titles his or her documentation boards and what description he or she adds to each pin that makes this platform a powerful documentation hub. Given Pinterest is designed to socially link its users by meaningfully connecting and suggesting similar pins and boards, the ability to share and amplify increases.
It is important to remember that in all the examples and narratives shared in this chapter, it was never meant to be about the platforms and tools. It is always about using the appropriate technology to support the actions involved in a learner’s documenting opportunity. Always at the forefront of the documentation phases and learningflow routine steps is thinking about how the primary and secondary learners will look for, capture, unpack, reflect on, share, and amplify their evidence of learning based on the pre-determined focuses and goals.
Going Beyond
To amplify your reading beyond this book’s pages, we have created discussion questions and prompts for this chapter, which are located at www.documenting4learning.com. To extend your thinking, reactions, and responses, you can connect with other readers by leaving comments on individual chapter’s discussion posts on our documenting4learning blog.
We also invite you to contribute and share your artifacts in other social media spaces to connect with and learn from other readers around the world using the #documenting4learning hashtag on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram; or by mentioning @documenting4learning on Facebook and Instagram, and @doc4learning on Twitter.
9 Documenting With Audio, Video, and Blogging Platforms and Tools in Mind
When the wind of change blows, some people build walls, others build windmills.
—Chinese Proverb
As mentioned in Chapter 8, the purpose of digital tools and platforms is to aid in acquiring and disseminating evidence of learning to evaluate, share, and amplify artifacts with local and global audiences, as well as having those audiences contributing and adding value in new and exciting ways. In this chapter, the use of platforms and tools to create and connect with authentic audiences continues.
The first section involves audio and video documentation; followed by blogging documentation, which serves as a hub for multimedia integration (text, image, audio, video); and the third section focuses on a digital-writing genre, hyperlinked writing, which is an essential genre to understand and engage in as a now form of communication.
Audio and Video Platforms and Tools
Audio Documentation
Audio documentation focuses on words, phrases, and sound eff
ects that support the learning content. Just as making thinking visible contributes to creating artifacts, making thinking audible does the same. For example, audio-documentation artifacts can capture conversations, concerns, reflections, thoughts, impressions, connections, and predictions.
Being able to communicate is a cornerstone of both traditional reading and writing, as well as the now literacies. In today’s world, being literate involves conveying meaning through textual, visual, and audible communication. In certain situations, the combination of static images (e.g., photograph, infographic) or video (e.g., film, animation) and meaningful audio (e.g., podcast) can be a powerful method to convey learning-thinking. Other times, this combination may be too much to ask of primary or secondary learners, due to their lack of experience or comfort level with capturing and unpacking audio recordings.
Therefore, a wise place to begin may be pure audio documentation, as it is a powerful moment when the communication of ideas, thoughts, and beliefs has to depend solely on sound to convey, reflect upon, and interpret one’s evidence of learning. Also, there are times when an image or video can steal the limelight from what is at the heart of being aurally conveyed.
Audio is well-suited for emerging readers and writers, as well as second-language learners. Audio-only documentation can also protect a learner’s identity in situations when privacy is needed. This may be an excellent documenting alternative in a school or district where photographs are not permitted on school-related websites or social media. Also, some learners do not like being photographed or filmed, but do not mind having their voices recorded and heard by peers or local or global audiences.
Speaking out loud to explain one’s thinking or articulating one’s reasoning can be a complex communication process that involves both cognitive and metacognitive processes. This is especially true when learners are expected to unpack and reflect on the captured recordings.
Take into consideration a time when you have heard your own voice recording. If it is beyond singing a song or reciting a poem, usually a specific word or phrase becomes a favorite (e.g., whereas . . . whereas . . .), ahhs and umms abound, or your rate changes to lightning speed.
In during-documentation recordings, a speaker needs to be cognizant of not only what he or she is trying to convey to an intended audience, but how it is being conveyed as well. In the post-documentation phase when unpacking the recording, editing to clean-up dead air time or vocalized pauses (e.g., uhhs) needs to take place, as well as the application of two higher-level thinking skills-based purpose and intended message:
Removing (cutting away) unimportant or unrelated-to-purpose clips
Remixing based on finding common threads or related sections
Putting these skills into action coupled with the content-learning focus to create podcasts and other audio formats (e.g., public service announcements, audio storytelling) provide documenting opportunities that learners often say are some of their favorites.
For example, second graders at a Jewish Day School were learning the historical and religious context of Purim, which is told in the book of Esther. Their Jewish Studies teacher, Rivka, and Silvia as her documenting coach, collaborated to plan a documenting opportunity for her class that included three learning focuses: writing a script that conveys an event-sequence; collaborating on a project; and working on their speaking fluency in the target language, Hebrew. To amplify sharing, they planned on having the students record their informational podcast, as well as share them with their parents via the second-grade class blog. Given the students had experience with podcasting the previous year as they produced Flat Stanley and Magic Tree House podcasts as first graders, the learning curve for editing and remixing the audio clips would not be great, except for a new student who the teacher and Silvia knew would quickly catch on with the help and support of her peers.
The pre-documentation phase included Rivka working with her class to figure out how to break apart the Purim story into key-event sections. She worked with each student to write his or her designated section of the story in Hebrew to create a collective script. The class then collaboratively made certain the entire sequence of events in Esther’s story was conveyed accurately and in order and by practice-reading their orated sentences. Lastly, they discussed and made decisions regarding the sound of their voices and sound effects needed to enhance their oration and engage a listening audience.
The during-documentation phase involved the students recording their sections in GarageBand. Silvia facilitated this process. While she made certain that each student’s sentence was recorded clearly, she purposefully had each student come to the microphone and record his or her sentence out of the sequential order of the story in preparation for the students to apply one of the learning focuses during post-production. The students loved listening to their sentence recordings over and over again. Some of them asked if they could re-record their sentences as they were trying to perfect their Hebrew articulation.
In the post-documentation phase, it was time for the students to edit the podcast file and re-mix each student’s sentence clip so that the collective clips were in the correct sequence of the Purim narrative. To make certain all students could be engaged in the decision-making process simultaneously, the teacher connected the computer to the classroom’s interactive whiteboard.
The students took turns coming up to the whiteboard and using their fingertips to highlight an audio snippet and drag and drop it into the recording track (see Image 9.1).
Image 9.1
They also took turns performing the editing process. They needed to listen, pause, decide where to position or reposition a clip, and listen once again to the entire track, assembling a giant audio puzzle. Eventually, they decided their Purim story was in the correct sequence.
Next, it was time to intersperse sound effects throughout the recording to add to the meaning and support the story being told. This part especially engaged students and heightened their enthusiasm to continue listening and sharing their story with their parents and families at home (scan QR Code 9.1).
QR Code 9.1 Scan this QR code to listen to the class’s Purim podcast episode.
http://langwitches.me/purim
While coaching Rivka and modeling the documenting phases and learningflow routine for her, Silvia created a collaborative Google Doc that served as a brainstorming tool, as well as a constant reminder of the opportunity’s learning focuses and goal for the podcasting project. Capturing the audio was inherent, as the podcast itself produced an audio recording with the student voices. The photographed images that were captured while students were working on the various stages of creating the audio recording served as visual evidence of what was being learned and how it authentically applied in the moment versus afterward.
Silvia was also mindful of her plans to share this class’s documenting opportunity beyond this classroom. Silvia’s blog was the platform she used to convey the artifacts of the class as primary learners, as well as her own professional learning as a secondary learner, and as amplification inspiration for her blog readers to try the same or similar documenting opportunity with their classes. Silvia believes that evidence FOR and AS learning artifacts are the best motivating change agent for students and educators, which she continually advocates by curating, sharing, and amplifying her experiences with educators from around the world in-person at workshops and conferences, as well as digitally through her blog and professional learning network (PLN).
Table 9.1 provides several more activities that may spark ideas for audio-documentation opportunities.
A few audio-recording tools include GarageBand, AudioMemo, and Voice Memos.
Video Documentation
Video recording and sharing using varying degrees of amplification are a daily occurrence. The amount of videos uploaded and viewed on social media platforms each day is astounding. And the numbers are only increasing. Therefore, it should not be a surprise that using video is an important aspect for capturing
and conveying documenting FOR and AS learning.
There are several reasons why using video to capture learning and share reflections is beneficial:
Viewers feel present when physically unable to be where the learning is taking place.
Viewers can play back moments in time, as many times as desired.
Changes over time can be seen due to stringing together related videos or segments.
Learners can annotext what is taking place for the purposes of reflection, commentary, and feedback.
One documentation bonus is that video provides the capability for capturing slow-motion and time-lapse video to convey a different perspective than the human eye is capable of capturing.
A common mistake when first beginning to capture learning evidence using video is trying to record everything, or letting the camera keep recording for long periods of time. As previously mentioned, learners as documenters do not want to have to wade through countless hours of raw collected footage to find a learning moment nugget. With experience, documenters develop a feel for what type of video needs to be captured, as well as how long a scene needs to be recorded in order to best capture the desired learning evidence. To minimize frustrations, be very clear on what and how to look for learning before documenters start recording the learning in action.
The following section provides several examples of video activities.