For our last screencast project I wanted to get back to basics and present something that is usable by the learners outside of my classroom. Up until now, my students have only received assistance within the class or after school in tutoring sessions. I never really thought about putting something online until now and after this experience I can see there is no turning back.
Dr. Hall gave us a few examples of the project and one inspired me to parody math examples that deal with caring for ventilator dependent patients, the minute ventilation formula. One thing I have noticed about my learners is when having to calculate formulas along with using the results to apply therapy they seem to be easily confused. In chapter 10: Applying the Segmenting and Pre-training Principles we learned of breaking up complex lessons into smaller parts to allow the learners a deeper cognitive process. By doing this and creating procedural worked examples, it gives a more simple path for the learners to not only follow along step-by-step but also a means of understanding the concept all together.
For my project I used two unfamiliar tools, Screencast-O-Matic to capture the presentation and the software Painters Essential 5 utilized by the Intuos Art pen and touch tablet, thus giving me a crash course in how to use these two. What was most challenging was that the tablet I bought to utilize with the software was designed more of “art” instruction not presentation modes such as “whiteboard.” I will say though even having what looks like the wrong tools I was able to be familiar enough to get it to do what I wanted. Screencasting may be a practice that is not often a part of my repertoire, but one thing is for sure it’s a practice that I no longer have to fear, if anything, it will forever be welcomed.
Frederick Reyes: EDTECH Learning Log 