So, I've been taking this online class for teachers, "Designing Digital Media for Teaching and Learning", designed my a group of college students as a project for their class, as I understand it. It's been quite a rich learning experience, and my only complaint is that I don't have more time to explore it fully and be more attuned. Today, however, I am positively GIDDY about the latest thing I've learned about in the course!!! It's all I can do to keep from jumping up and down as my brain races away with the classroom learning possibilities -- My students are going to LOSE. THEIR. MINDS. when I show them this!!!!
I signed up for the course, because I was hoping it would be practical as well as theoretical, and that it would help me to pull myself up out of the quagmire of mediocrity that we can often become stuck in if we get sucked into using digital technology as substitution and augmentation rather than transformation. Well, is it ever working!!!
Our latest assignment had us working with a tool I'd never heard of before -- Thinglink -- to apply our understanding of Mayer's Multimedia Learning Principles, and evaluate an image according to a few of said principles.
I chose a Biodiversity image that I found online, since we're just finishing up that unit in Science, andhere is what I came up with as a first go. (Clicking on the image below will take you to the interactive version I hastily created of the image in an attempt to muck about with Thinglink.)
I signed up for the course, because I was hoping it would be practical as well as theoretical, and that it would help me to pull myself up out of the quagmire of mediocrity that we can often become stuck in if we get sucked into using digital technology as substitution and augmentation rather than transformation. Well, is it ever working!!!
Our latest assignment had us working with a tool I'd never heard of before -- Thinglink -- to apply our understanding of Mayer's Multimedia Learning Principles, and evaluate an image according to a few of said principles.
I chose a Biodiversity image that I found online, since we're just finishing up that unit in Science, andhere is what I came up with as a first go. (Clicking on the image below will take you to the interactive version I hastily created of the image in an attempt to muck about with Thinglink.)
I am blown away by the possibilities I can imagine for students to explore a concept and also to demonstrate their learning using this tool!!! Here, for example, are two projects done by students,
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on the topic of "flight" and birds...
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I cannot wait to use Thinglink in my classroom, and am even thinking of paying for a pro account so that I can have students collaborate on assignments (each student in a group adds a link button to the same image, for example).
One idea I have in in health, where we are talking about "Healthy Eating" currently (contrary to popular belief, the revised health curriculum in Ontario is not all about sex!!!) is that after we look at a poster about healthy foods and discuss a variety of healthy food choices from different cultural backgrounds, students can take a photo of a meal in their home, and create a Thinglink telling 2 links (in green) about what makes it healthy, and one link in red telling what would make the meal even healthier.
Another thing I am thinking of is having them take a photo of our classroom, and creating a thinglink that outlines their favourite areas in the classroom as well as highlighting some of the learning tools in our room that they find most useful. These can then be shared with family so that parents can see our classroom.
I am SOOOOO excited about this tool!!! : - D
One idea I have in in health, where we are talking about "Healthy Eating" currently (contrary to popular belief, the revised health curriculum in Ontario is not all about sex!!!) is that after we look at a poster about healthy foods and discuss a variety of healthy food choices from different cultural backgrounds, students can take a photo of a meal in their home, and create a Thinglink telling 2 links (in green) about what makes it healthy, and one link in red telling what would make the meal even healthier.
Another thing I am thinking of is having them take a photo of our classroom, and creating a thinglink that outlines their favourite areas in the classroom as well as highlighting some of the learning tools in our room that they find most useful. These can then be shared with family so that parents can see our classroom.
I am SOOOOO excited about this tool!!! : - D
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