A Guide to Documenting Learning
Page 22
What was it about the tutorial(s) that caused you to lose interest and discontinue watching? Why?
When specific actions distracted you while watching the tutorial? Why?
She met with any students who were not familiar with creating screencasts or screencasting terminology or techniques, such as using voice-over, text boxes or frames, directional arrows, opacity factor, and cursor or mouse visibility used to draw attention to a specific spot or area on the screen. She also provided them with step-by-step visuals and a screencast how-to tutorial to watch while practice-using the screencasting tool. (For example, Image 9.2 is a screenshot of the screen as someone is annotating a video recorded in ScreenFlow. The information arrows indicate the various features terminology found throughout the editing screen.)
Image 9.2
Students used peer-review and peer-feedback cycles through the three documentation phases, which included the storyboarding, recording, revising, and editing their screencast tutorials. Mrs. Villard noticed that their cognitive and metacognitive processes played critical roles in being tutorial designers. When they were unpacking and reflecting on their drafted and finalized tutorials, the insights they shared regarding their learning were evident as she listened in on their review-feedback discussions.
Once the tutorials were finalized, the students saved and uploaded them to the cloud via YouTube. The students then emailed the survey participants to let them know that their requested tutorials were now available for viewing. They also digitally designed posters and flyers with QR codes announcing their online-tutorial video bank, which they printed out and hung in the school hallways, as well as placed in the faculty lounge and the school’s front office.
While Mrs. Villard did not do so for this documenting opportunity, she made a note in her professional learning journal that the next time she has students creating screencasts or other types of tutorials, she would ask them to save their first-attempt tutorial and make a copy to make any revision or edit changes based on that review-feedback cycle. She would also ask them to continue creating new iterations of the tutorial based on review-feedback until it is finalized. By doing so, she and her students will have growth-over-time evidence of learning artifacts that visibly and audibly convey nuances in how they grew as tutorial designers and gaining understanding of what constitutes quality, effective screencasting tutorial design.
QR Code 9.9 Scan this QR code to experience student-created screencasting tutorials.
http://langwitches.me/tutorials
Several screencasting platforms and tools include: ScreenFlow, Screen-cast-o-matic, Explain Everything, Jing, CamStudio, and Quicktime.
It’s Time to Take Action!: Chapter 9 Action Step
Now that you have read through a wide variety of audio and video documentation explanations and narratives since the first page of this chapter, it is time for you to take action and create an audio or video artifact using one of the highlighted features.
Whichever one you select, be certain that what you create reflects a
Personal learning focus with your target audience being your family or friends (e.g., hobby, favorite book or movie highlights, family event, holiday tradition)
Professional learning focus with your target audience being colleagues, administrators, or professors
Classroom learning focus where you and your students are co-learners with your target audience to be determined as a collaborative team.
Given there is a variety of video, movie-making, and screencasting platforms and tools to choose from, rather than stay in your tool-and-platform comfort zone, find someone (possibly even a student) or YouTube video that can help you learn a new platform or tool that is a perfect fit for your action step’s focus and goal.
Be aware of your learning curve when using the new platform or tool to create your artifact:
What skills are you developing or expanding as a documenter-learner while using the selected platform or tool?
Share your reflections and audience reactions to your audio or video recording digitally. Don’t forget to link, attach, or embed your audio- or video-based artifact to your selected social media platform.
Remember to use the #documenting4learning hashtag on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram; or by mentioning @documenting4learning on Facebook and Instagram, and @doc4learning on Twitter.
Blogging Platforms and Tools
Blogging Documentation
Clark (2007) observes, “Don’t focus on having a great blog. Focus on producing a blog that’s great for your readers.” What he conveys is that people want to read a blogger’s latest posts because of the interest and mental engagement the posts generate. Interests could be based on thought-provoking points, helpful hints, or information presented from unique or unusual perspectives that create a collective narrative shared over time.
A blogging platform, such as WordPress, allows a blogger, as a primary or secondary learner, to create documentation in a variety of formats. This leads to blogging that serves as a hub for multimedia artifacts and a wide range of evidence of learning. Blogs allow learners to
tag and categorize posts based on content;
automatically archive the documentation, due to the platform saving the posts in reverse chronological order;
embed textual, visual, audio, and video artifacts to aid in expressing thoughts or sharing narratives;
hyperlink to previous posts, as well as resources and references on the Internet; and
encourage commenting as a form of reflection and conversation with an audience.
A blog provides a documenter-learner with a platform hub to voice his or her thoughts, ideas, and information with a global audience that promotes sharing and amplify in visible, purposeful, and meaningful ways.
The following section provides examples of blogging documentation activities.
Blogging Challenge.
There are many blogging challenges available online for educators and students to participate in individually or collaboratively. These challenges range from a task that teaches the blogger the logistics of blogging to connecting bloggers with like interests to share and discuss topics to write about in future posts. Participating in a challenge gives learners documenting opportunities that provide visible patterns, trends, and growth over time.
As a professional learning or student documenter-blogger, participating in a formal blogging challenge project from Edublogs Teacher Challenges may prove beneficial, especially if new to this platform. The Edublogs website provides four challenge categories to choose from:
Blogging with Students (for Educators)
Blogging Boot Camp (for Students)
Personal (or Professional) Blogging (for Educators)
Building your PLN (which includes some blogging aspects)
For educators and students who already have a comfort level with blogging, there have been numerous examples throughout this book that have incorporated the use of blog posts as an avenue for sharing and amplifying evidence of learning artifacts. Beyond thinking about how to use blog posts strategically in future documenting opportunities, designing or participating in more advanced challenges can be an excellent way to crowdsource learning moments and document a variety of learning focuses and goals.
QR Code 9.10 Scan this QR code to read a how-to guide for Edublogs Teacher Challenges.
http://langwitches.me/teacherchallenge
Conduct a search for blogging challenge, and myriad hits will appear. Narrowing down the search by adding a descriptor may prove beneficial (e.g., blogging challenge for elementary students). Remember that one of the key purposes for participating in blogging challenges is to capture evidence of one’s thinking at that particular time. It is not about being perfect in conveying thoughts, grammar, or punctuation; or being an expert in a topic or concept. It is about being transparent in what someone is learning or discovering and how that is affecting him or her at that moment.
For blogging inspiration, Image 9.3 conta
ins a Documentation & Blogging Challenge that blends some of the documentation activities and examples shared in this book with classic blogging topics. While growth over time is limited in this challenge versus a year’s worth of posts to reflect on or analyze based on a consistent topic or theme, it is often surprising to discover nuances in one’s posting practices that become visible in just a short period of time. For a full explanation of each of the 18 challenges, scan QR Code 9.11 or go directly to www.documenting4learning.com.
QR Code 9.11 Scan this QR code to go to the Documenting4Learning website and access the Documentation & Blogging Challenge details.
http://langwitches.me/blogging-challenge
Image 9.3
Team Blogging.
Blogging can be lonely and frustrating, especially in the beginning when it is just the learner-blogger’s thoughts while sitting at his or her keyboard. Although the blogger is writing and publishing with an audience in mind, first-time visitors and commenters might take a while to find their way to a newbie’s blog. Therefore, participating in team blogging may be an answer.
This concept creates a formal partnership with at least one other learner-blogger or fellow blogging classroom. The alliance between or among the bloggers consists of a commitment to alternatively read and comment on one another’s blog posts. An example of buddy learner-blogging could be between two biology teachers, one living in the United States and the other living in Argentina, who commit for one school year to read each other’s blog posts on a consistent basis and provide each another thoughts and feedback using the blog’s comment feature.
A student example of learner-blogging can involve three classrooms. A benefit to a team blogging challenge is that it can be conducted asynchronously. For the example explained here, the classrooms are located in the United States, Switzerland, and Thailand. Their team blogging challenge will last three weeks (see Image 9.4):
First week: The United States classroom is responsible for writing blog posts on their classroom blog, while the Switzerland and Thailand classrooms take on the role of readers and commenters.
Second week: The Switzerland classroom is responsible for writing blog posts on their classroom blog, while the Thailand and United States classrooms take on the role of readers and commenters.
Third week: The Thailand classroom is responsible for writing blog posts on their classroom blog, while the United States and Switzerland classrooms take on the role of readers and commenters.
The number of team blogging classrooms or participants can be increased, but if there are too many the challenge loses its intimacy, which a smaller number of participants provide. Whether buddy or team blogging, thinking of a theme, concept, or topic to use throughout the blogging challenge’s series of exchanges helps determine the desired evidence of learning in the blog posts. Learning focuses and goals are endless. They can be related to curriculum content, global awareness connections, digital citizenship, metacognition, or communication skills to name a few. Regardless of what is selected, team blogging provides authentic and meaningful documenting opportunities for all those involved.
Hyperlinked Writing
Hyperlinked writing is an often overlooked and misunderstood genre, which is detrimental to digital-age learners and society as a whole. It is sometimes referred to as multilayered writing, non-linear writing, or amplified writing because the original layer of text has purposefully been extended—linked—with text, image, or video to additional resources, making the author’s thinking about the content’s relationships and connections visible.
Image 9.4
Unfortunately, educational digital writing (e.g., blogs, websites, wikis, social media platforms, shared documents) oftentimes merely substitutes analog writing for digital versions, which is the lowest level of the SAMR taxonomy. While a simple transfer from analog to digital is possible, the majority of current learning does not require learners to think hyperlinked when writing. This is unfortunately true for many professional writers as well who have their books or materials on digital devices. Who has not clicked on a challenging word or phrase in an article or book in hopes of being taken to its definition or further explanation, and it does not happen.
Hunt (2011) reflected on his concern from a digital writer’s perspective when students and teachers merely use substitution of traditional writing on a digital tool or platform:
[What is] the kind of writing that’s being asked of students in these spaces? Well, it’s interesting—I can break it down into three types—daily summaries, written collectively by elementary school classes; reflective essays about various topics; and responses to teacher questions. Lots of it is writing that doesn’t require a blog. And it’s writing that involves very, very, very little source material. Very few quotes. Very few links. And the links, when they’re present, are not embedded in the text. They lie naked and open in the text. And that seems problematic to me.
It is therefore imperative that contemporary learners have an awareness and ability to apply hyperlinked-writing characteristics to their digital writing artifacts, including reaching the higher levels of the Hyperlinked Writing Taxonomy (see Image 9.5).
Image 9.5
To aid in understanding the nuance among the five hyperlinked-writing levels, here is a sentence that can be used to convey each level’s hyperlinked functionality from greatest impact to least impact.
Documenting learning supports critical thinking and sharing with others.
Connection: Documenting learning supports critical thinking and sharing with others. The boldfaced and underlined phrase documenting learning links to a previous blog post the writer published. The link provides evidence of the blogger’s learning over time, as well as a different lens and an additional layer of content, given her understanding and perspective was most likely different at that time.
Curation: Documenting learning supports critical thinking and sharing with others. The boldfaced and underlined phrase supports critical thinking links to a non-subscription professional journal article that curates current research on how critical thinking supports learning.
Illustration: Documenting learning supports critical thinking and sharing with others. The boldfaced and underlined phrase sharing with others links to a blog post that illustrates a real-world example of how sharing amplified the blogger’s learning.
Information: Documenting learning supports critical thinking and sharing with others. The boldfaced and underlined term critical thinking links to a website that defines the term.
Isolation: Documenting learning supports critical thinking and sharing with others. The boldfaced and underlined word supports links to an online fundraising announcement, which has nothing to do with the sentence or overall content.
Creating content using digital writing tools and platforms requires writers to reflect on their digital reading experiences based on the importance of hyperlinking as conveyed in the Hyperlinked Writing Taxonomy.
To do so accurately enables documenter-learners to be cognizant of the necessary choice-making in ensuring they are effective hyperlinking writers. Fryer (2008) shares, “Hyperlinked writing is the most powerful form of writing, and provides one of the most important aspects of complexity in writing for a global audience. There is great power as well as responsibility when you link to the ideas of another.”
As learners create digital writing artifacts, it is important to require them to embed relevant links to individual words or phrases to extend readers’ experience. Doing so adds a depth to the digital writing that aids readers in making stronger connections with the writer’s message, and not just satisfying the teacher or completing a task.
Hyperlinked writing goes beyond simply adding clickable words to otherwise static, one-dimensional text. Critical thinking and strategizing are necessary to be functioning at a higher-order hyperlinking ability. A digital writer must be able to
Emphasize and purposefully point readers to a virtual resource or website to connect them
to a specific idea or concept that supports the writing content and context
Provide a framework and content-background context based on target audience’s needs and/or expertise
Ensure credibility of being a quality researcher by allowing readers to verify his or her claims, opinions, or shared information by accessing and analyzing hyperlinked sources
Incorporate specific resources and citations as a form of filtering and refining relevant content for the readers
Use hyperlinks effectively as a medium to convey her or his personal train of thought
Create a larger meaning making picture for readers that may have otherwise been disconnected content or context
Rosen (2008) explains the critical connection linking causes among hyperlinked writing, one’s thinking, and one of the key reasons the Internet was developed:
The link, which is the idea that you’re interested in this, but did you know about that. Or here’s what I’m saying, but you should see what they’re saying. Or you’re here, but you know there is also this over here, is actually building out the potential of the web to link people, which is what Timothy Berners-Lee [inventor of the World Wide Web] put into it in the first place. So, when we link, we are expressing the ethic of the web, which is to connect people and knowledge. And the reason you link doesn’t have anything to do with copywriting and property, it has to do it that’s how we make the web into a web of connections, and that’s how we connect knowledge to people.