Читать книгу NOW Classrooms, Grades 9-12 - Meg Ormiston - Страница 9
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Embracing Creativity
When students actively engage in learning, it makes creativity and innovation possible in every subject area, with or without the use of digital tools. Introducing purposeful uses for digital tools to your classroom simply gives you a means of broadening students’ technological skill set in ways that will let them produce quality products for the 21st century. Creating empowered learners is one of the ISTE 2016 Standards for Students that aligns with this chapter’s creative focus. By the time many students reach high school, they are programmed to create work based on a specific rubric. Often, the rubric defines the final project as a poster, a diagram, or a paper. As you read this chapter, think about ways you can empower learners with student voice and choice about what they want to create to demonstrate what they learned about the topic.
Using multimedia tools, like those we highlight in this chapter, gives students creative ways to demonstrate what they learn in any subject area. Think beyond the research paper and other text-heavy projects, and imagine student-created multimedia projects that creatively and viscerally illustrate what they have learned while also offering students more variety in how they work. For example, a group of students could plan and film a video in front of a green screen and add video to the background during the editing process. In the same class, another group might write a rap song to help them remember what they learned on the topic. Letting student groups define their final product is an important skill for college and careers, and it allows students to creatively show what they have learned. Sir Ken Robinson (2009), in his book The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything, addresses the importance of variety in the classroom:
Academic ability is very important, but so are other ways of thinking. People who think visually might love a particular topic or subject, but won’t realize it if their teachers only present it in one, nonvisual way…. These approaches to education are also stifling some of the most important capacities that young people now need to make their way in the increasingly demanding world of the twenty-first century—the powers of creative thinking. (p. 14)
As students learn to become content creators and not just passive consumers, it is critical that you focus your instruction on your learning goals tied to your curriculum. Every project should start with a clear learning objective before the groups start producing their projects. Every student should be able to communicate the lesson objective to anyone that stops them to ask what they are producing. It is important to do this before the lights, camera, and action begin. To that end, this chapter’s lessons show how to use photo, video, and audio tools with learning goals across all content areas to allow students to go beyond text to creatively demonstrate what they know and can do.
Using Digital Images in Projects
Although readers may sufficiently understand some stories and data lists by just reading them, writers can often help their audiences better and more quickly understand a story or concept if they include photos or images. Working with images is also a nonlinguistic representation that often leads to deeper understanding of a topic. These representations include using whole-body movement, building, drawing, singing, woodworking, coding, and more. So much of the work we do in schools is focused on developing language skills, but it is important that high school students also learn how to craft a clear message using a combination of images. The Toledo Museum of Art (n.d.) highlights the importance of studying visual language:
In an increasingly digital world we’re communicating more with images and less with words. Images are superseding words as our primary form of communication. On Instagram alone, 20 billion photos have been uploaded since 2010. Many of us employ visual language, often without realizing it. Being fluent in the language of images gives us an advantage at school, at work, and at home.
Leading researchers, educators, museum professionals, filmmakers, and artists believe that being fluent in visual language can improve one’s creativity, critical thinking, educational achievement, empathy towards others and the ability to decipher technology.
Grades 9–12 students have experience snapping and sending images to friends outside of school, but to be fluent using visual language, they need to use those skills to create a clear message that demonstrates what they know and can do in the classroom. For that reason, we have included this NOW lesson set so you can help your students better find images, create their own images, and enhance images for their projects in ways that display their understanding of a topic.
Novice: Explaining Ideas With Images
Learning goal:
I can use a combination of images to enhance others’ learning and understanding.
By the time students enter high school, they have consumed media in many multimedia formats including video games, television, and online streaming video. For this lesson, students will use that background knowledge to create sophisticated projects telling their own message through imagery. This lesson has students search for digital images and use them in projects to more clearly explain ideas so that readers better understand them. For example, when writing a report about an element on the periodic table, a student in science class might use images to help illustrate the information they gathered during their research. When students can use appropriate images to display their understanding of material, they deepen their understanding of that material.
In addition to helping you teach students how to enhance their learning with images, this lesson also gives you a good opportunity to enforce with students the importance of respecting copyright. Google Images (https://images.google.com), for example, includes a Usage Rights filter under its Tools menu that allows students to locate images that are free for use under Creative Commons (https://creativecommons.org), a global nonprofit organization that offers copyright-licensing tools. (We talk more about copyright in chapter 5, page 120.) In addition to Google Images, Flickr (www.flickr.com), Pixabay (https://pixabay.com), Freerange Stock (https://freerangestock.com), and Pexels (www.pexels.com) all offer access to copyright-free images students can use in their projects. Flickr is a particularly great resource because it doesn’t require students to have an account to access images.
Process: Finding Images
Use the following four steps to teach students how to locate and download images.
1. After completing a unit, assign student groups one of the unit topics and have them create a multimedia review of the content using just digital images, not text. The entire class will use the products each group creates as review material before the summative assessment.
2. Have students conduct a search for free-to-use images applicable to their project. They should select images they want to use and save them to their device.
3. Provide time for students to add the images they found to their project. Remind each group that other groups will use what they create to prepare for the final assessment. Stress the importance of accuracy in their fact finding and image selection, keeping the focus on the content, but also adding a creative approach to the project.
4. When groups complete their guide, have them share it with other members of the class using the classroom LMS. Both you and your students should provide feedback to the groups as they view projects as a whole group.
Connections
You can apply this lesson to different content areas in the following suggested ways.
TEACHING TIPS
To promote a discussion regarding what images are the most effective and why, try having students work in groups as they look for images on a topic you assign.
An image doesn’t necessarily have to be a photo. Depending on the subject area and the assigned project, students can search for illustrations, graphs, tables, and more.
• English language arts: Have students read a two- to three-page short story that has no images. Students can find images that would help other readers better understand the story and that could possibly offer additional layers to the story for readers to consider.
• Mathematics: Students can read an explanation of what it means if a quadratic function has no real solution, one real solution, or two real solutions. Have students search for and submit example images of graphed quadratic functions that fit these criteria. You can also have students submit images that display the standard form of a quadratic function, that depict the discriminant of a quadratic function, and so on.
• Social science: After discussing an article describing the U.S. Civil Rights movement, students can find and submit images that enhance the article’s viewpoint. To find a useful article, use a library database such as MasterFILE Premier (www.ebsco.com/products/research-databases/masterfile-premier) or ERIC (https://eric.ed.gov).
• Art: Have students choose an artist, review their full body of work, and make a connection to whether that artist had a growth mindset or fixed mindset. The images students select should reflect the history of the artist and their mindset.
• Career and technical education: In an early-childhood-education class, have students create an age-appropriate lesson for prospective students that uses images to help them understand a concept like shapes or colors.
Operational: Creating Original Images
Learning goal:
I can create original images to better illustrate my learning and enhance my project.
Not only must students understand how to use images to illustrate concepts and ideas, they must understand how to create their own. This is important because many careers require students to communicate ideas using images as well as text when working with teams that work remotely from different geographic areas. Trying to explain complex ideas with just the limitations of text can be particularly challenging in the workplace if team members speak different languages. Creating and sharing images breaks the language barrier, helping the whole team be successful. To that end, the purpose of this lesson is to get students comfortable creating original images that demonstrate what they have learned and explain their point of view.
Students can use a variety of project-design apps and services to create their own images in their work, such as Tackk (https://tackk.com), Canva (www.canva.com), and Google Drawings (https://drawings.google.com). App features will vary, but these programs typically allow users to make simple drawings, posters, brochures, presentations, and other electronic and printed materials. Google Drawings also has an extension for the Google Chrome web browser at http://bit.ly/1K7OFZ4, which makes it even easier to use.
Process: Creating a Digital Image Project
Use the following six steps to teach students how to create a digital image project.
1. Have student groups select an app or website to use to create their image project.
2. Students should start a new design project and choose a design type or theme. Designs in presentation and poster categories are ideal because they scale onto 8.5- × 11-inch paper. Students can choose to use either a premade layout or start a design of their own.
3. Tell students to experiment with different design elements by adding shapes, grids, frames, and photos to their project. Canva, for example, includes a collection of both free and premium elements. (Students should stick to free options.) They should also customize these elements to adjust their size, color, and location on the page.
4. Students should add text elements of different sizes and fonts.
5. Depending on the design type they selected, students may have the ability to change their project’s background image, color, and design.
6. When they finish their image project, have students save their work and export it or share it. Specific exporting and sharing options will vary depending on the app or platform students selected, but if possible, have them share their work by copying a URL to it and submitting the link on the class LMS.
Connections
You can apply this lesson to different content areas in the following suggested ways.
TEACHING TIP
Students can get started with creating images in multiple ways, including by taking digital photos throughout the school building, drawing images and then scanning them, using apps like those highlighted in this lesson to make images, and using a spreadsheet tool to create graphs or tables.
• English language arts: Assign students to groups, and have them retell a chapter of a book they read using only images that they create. Students can exchange their project with another group and discuss how accurately the images retell the chapter.
• Mathematics: Provide students with an article containing mathematical data related to your curriculum. Students should create a graph or table to organize, analyze, and make sense of the data. Consider having students create different types of graphs or tables to compare and contrast information. Groups of students work together using the same data, but they should create different types of charts including comparison and relationships, composition, distribution, or a word cloud.
• Science: When students learn the periodic table, discuss with them the basics of the periodic table groups (noble gases, transition metals, and so on). Students can create images that provide visual representations of the differences between the groups.
• Career and technical education: In design class, have students draw a floor plan of a room using specific dimensions and details that include windows and doors. Next, students should furnish their room to scale. This is the start of a unit that will grow in sophistication to later become a three-dimensional model of a home.
Wow: Annotating and Enhancing Images
Learning goal:
I can enhance images by annotating them and making them interactive.
As students become more sophisticated at using imagery to communicate their learning, they can explore more advanced ways to manipulate images and create more complicated visuals. Advanced image manipulation can involve an infinite variety of elements, from creating simple annotations to adding interactive elements like web links to external content or creating cool new products like special effects on photos or original comic strips. Students can even use more than one app or tool to manipulate the same image or images.
For annotation purposes, have students explore tools such as ThingLink (www.thinglink.com) and Annotable (http://moke.com/annotable). These tools let users import images and tag them with links to webpages, text, and videos that others can view by clicking on those annotations. For more evocative ways to shake up students’ use of imagery, introduce them to tools like Comic Life (http://plasq.com/apps/comiclife/macwin), PicMonkey (www.picmonkey.com), and Evernote (https://evernote.com). These tools let students do everything from create comic books to fix up photos and add special effects to them or annotate a PDF.
Process: Manipulating Images
Use the following five steps to teach students how to annotate and manipulate digital images.
1. Instruct students to locate or create an image to explain a unit topic to a classmate. Once students have the base image, they will further manipulate it to clarify how the image connects to the content.
2. Have students add annotations to the image using text boxes that either highlight something important about it or explain their learning on a topic.
3. Have students make the images interactive by adding links to them that point to external content, such as webpages or videos.
4. As a separate product, or as an enhancement to the current one, have students use a specific tool to apply special-effects filters to their work or create a specialized visual product (like a comic strip). Remember, the ultimate goal is for students to enhance images in visually interesting ways that also demonstrate their learning.
5. Have students share their final products through the classroom LMS and then, before an assessment, work with a partner to exchange images and discuss the unit content.
Connections
You can apply this lesson to different content areas in the following suggested ways.
TEACHING TIPS
As an advanced exercise, divide students into groups, and provide each student group with a different topic or story. When students present their enhanced images, the class should be able to convey the original topic or story without knowing the information you provided to the group.
After students select the apps, programs, or websites they want to use for their projects, have them share with the class the features of the tools they found most helpful.
• English language arts: Give students a short story or fable. Have them use the graphic-novel format to recreate the story using images. The annotations students place over the base image should provide clarification, and the inserted hyperlinks should link to websites to provide additional information and make the images interactive.
• Mathematics: In a unit covering maximizing area, have students illustrate the situation of a given problem by drawing a picture of what they maximize, and then have them annotate it with a mathematical solution to the problem.
• Social science: Review with students the key reasons why the United States chose to become involved in World War II. Have student groups collaborate to select or create images to which they can apply special-effects filters that retell the story of U.S. involvement.
• Career and technical education: In woodshop class, have students snap a picture of a piece of equipment and then annotate key things to remember about its special features or safety guidelines. After having students share the images using the classroom LMS, print the pictures and post them in the shop as safety reminders. If you have a class website, post the images there to maintain any interactive elements such as links to external resources.
Using Video to Demonstrate Learning
No matter what topic we teach, we all know one thing about our students—they love to watch videos. It doesn’t matter whether they come from YouTube (www.youtube.com), Vimeo (https://vimeo.com), or some other platform. Although watching video is generally a very passive activity, making videos often brings out a creative side in students that other media do not. Video use is also increasing in professional workplaces. For example, many students will end up doing some sort of marketing, a field in which marketers increasingly use video to help products and services stand out from other options. According to Mary Lister (2017), writing at the online advertising blog WordStream:
• 82% of Twitter users watch video content on Twitter.
• YouTube has over a billion users, almost one-third of total internet users.
• 45% of people watch more than an hour of Facebook or YouTube videos a week.
• More than 500 million hours of videos are watched on YouTube each day.
• More video content is uploaded in 30 days than the major U.S. television networks have created in 30 years.
• 87% of online marketers use video content.
There is no doubt video already plays, and will continue to play, a starring role in the professional world. It doesn’t stop there, however. By allowing students to create informational videos in our classrooms and then watching what they come up with, even teachers who are experts on a particular subject open themselves up to seeing topics differently than they may be used to. For example, after watching an effective student-created video, you might opt to reteach a lesson using the method the student captured in the video.
In creating their work, allow students to produce videos using whatever tools they find most convenient for them. Video production can be very simple or complex depending on what equipment students have access to for recording and editing. We explore some of the digital tools students can use in this NOW lesson set. Using these tools, you may have students create short videos that demonstrate basic understanding of a classroom topic, or their videos could cover entire units of study as a means of review.
Novice: Recording Short Videos
Learning goal:
I can create, save, and upload short videos that demonstrate my learning.
Making short videos gives high school students a great way to get involved in and take ownership of learning concepts in the classroom. In the classroom, we have found that when students work with nonlinguistic representations, images, and multimedia, they often remember the experience better in comparison to text-based lessons. Therefore, this lesson’s purpose is to have students create videos that help them better remember concepts.
Some students will come to class with experience creating videos while others will not have that experience. Having students with different experience levels work in groups can help distribute knowledge across the entire classroom. Once they create their videos, students can share them with peers using the classroom LMS or a video-hosting site, such as YouTube or Vimeo.
Students can use several video-creation apps to record video, including iMovie (www.apple.com/imovie), Animoto (https://animoto.com), and WeVideo (www.wevideo.com), but for recording simple videos, they can most easily use whichever camera app their digital device includes by default.
Process: Recording a Simple Video
Use the following three steps to have students record a short, simple video.
1. Have students think about a classroom learning topic they want to discuss in a video and then select a video-recording app to use for their project. Because this lesson’s goal is to have students explain some aspect of their learning, let individual students or small groups define the purpose of their video and decide how they plan on recording the video, what props they might need, and what supporting resources they might need.
2. Planning is key to the success of this lesson. Before any cameras start rolling, you should provide students about half a class period to create a plan, and then ask them to film the video outside of class if possible. The best videos are short and memorable, so ask students to create videos from thirty seconds to three minutes in length. Let them have fun explaining what they have learned.
3. Have students save and export or share their work. Although this may include posting the projects to the classroom LMS, most video-creation apps allow you to directly export projects to popular video-hosting services like YouTube and Vimeo. WeVideo allows users to publish directly to the WeVideo website. Most video-hosting services allow students to select if they want to make their published video private or public. If you have students post their videos to one of these platforms, have them also share links to their videos on the classroom LMS.
TEACHING TIP
Students can make short videos on most classrooms’ instructional pillars. You can feature these videos during a review session, before an assessment, or show videos from one class to another class. You might even discover some hidden acting talent in your students.
Connections
You can apply this lesson to different content areas in the following suggested ways.
TECH TIPS
Some video-creation apps, including Screencast-O-Matic (http://screencast-o-matic.com), allow users to record their device’s screen as they carry out activities on it. This is called screencasting, and it gives students an excellent way to demonstrate a concept using their device while they record their own narration over the on-screen action.
Video-creation apps and online tools often operate differently on different devices. Make sure you allow students time to get familiar with the tools available to them.
• Science: Have students make a video of themselves explaining lab safety, including all the rules they must follow and the common mistakes that can endanger students if they don’t follow the rules.
• Art: Have students create a video covering specified techniques they use in art class so other students can learn how to correctly apply the techniques from watching the video.
• Physical education: Have students create a video that demonstrates the instructional pillars of your physical education program, such as the proper use of machines in the weight room or a series of warmups you use in a dance class.
• Career and technical education: In an automotive repair class, have students create a short instructional video about how to safely use equipment. Students should share their videos on the classroom LMS.
Operational: Editing to Improve Videos
Learning goal:
I can edit videos to create more polished products that better demonstrate my learning.
Recording a basic video is both a simple and useful process, but for students to truly unlock their creativity, they need to know how to edit video. The purpose of this lesson is to have students edit a video that you or they created to remove unwanted or unnecessary content, convey a steady flow of information, and provide visual flourishes that can engage an audience both inside and outside the classroom. As in the novice lesson, different students will bring different degrees of knowledge to this exercise. Diffuse this knowledge throughout your classroom by having experienced students work in groups with less experienced students. To further help students understand the importance of polishing their work, we encourage you to share student work beyond classroom walls using a video-hosting service and social media.
In addition to the apps we referenced in the novice-level section of this NOW lesson set, students can try using tools on YouTube (www.youtube.com) or Magisto (www.magisto.com) to edit their videos or include interesting visual effects in them.
Process: Editing a Video
Use the following three steps to teach students how to edit a video.
1. So that they have something to edit, provide an editable video for students, or have them locate or create a new video of their own.
2. Let students or student groups select an app or tool they will use to edit their video. Students should import their recorded video clips with the app or tool and begin sequencing the video content in a way that makes it more compelling. This can include removing extraneous material, adding text or other special effects, adding video transitions, and more.
3. Students should review their final product. When they feel happy with their work, they should save it and post it to a platform you designate. This could include uploading it to a video-hosting site like YouTube or Vimeo or posting it to the classroom LMS. As a final step, have students explain the editing strategies they used so everyone can learn from each other.
Connections
You can apply this lesson to different content areas in the following suggested ways.
TECH TIP
Some schools still block video-hosting sites like YouTube. If this is the case at your school, students should use a dedicated video-creation tool like iMovie to edit their videos and then post the videos to the classroom LMS.
• Mathematics: Have students create a video explaining a topic like the slope of a line. Have them enhance the video by adding in comments, sound effects, and pauses that emphasize the important parts, such as formulas and easy-to-forget details.
• Social science: Instruct students to create a video reenactment of a historical period by taking short videos from different time periods and connecting the episodes with details from history. Have students merge all the videos together, with proper transitions and audio, and present their complete video to the class.
• Science: Record a video of a chemical reaction caused by different elements in a chemistry-lab exercise, and then have students go back and edit the video to add in the details of what happens in it, such as what elements are in use, what reaction happens, and why the elements react the way they do.
• Career and technical education: In a welding class, have student groups locate a video online that explains a repair process on an object and is at least six minutes long. Instruct students to edit the video to one to three minutes, distilling it down to only its most crucial information. Students should share their videos through the classroom LMS.
Wow: Mashing Up Multimedia Assets
Learning goal:
I can use assets from multiple media formats, like images and multiple audio sources, to create a video that clearly communicates a message.
The video medium inherently combines multiple types of media content—audio and visuals, for example—but it’s possible for students to use advanced video tools to create even more impressive multimedia videos. Green screening, which uses a green background to swap out part of a primary video source with other images or with secondary video sources, is an excellent example of this kind of mashing of media assets. Likewise, students can implement multiple audio tracks into a video, allowing them to merge narration, sound effects, and background music. The more video skills and strategies students learn to deliver professional-looking content, the better prepared they are to do high-level work in college and in the professional world.
The video-creation tools we’ve already introduced in this NOW lesson set provide various capabilities students can use for this wow-level lesson. We suggest introducing students to Green Screen by Do Ink, an iOS app that works on iPads and iPhones. It is easy to use and allows users to insert numerous images and videos into an existing video’s background. Students can also use WeVideo (www.wevideo.com) on any device that interfaces with Google Drive. VirtualDub (http://virtualdub.sourceforge.net) is also a free, open-source video-editing tool for Windows computers. Also, ask your students if they know of any alternative apps, websites, or free programs.
Process: Recording a Green-Screen Video
Use the following eight steps to have students create a green-screen video.
1. Students should select a green-screen app to use for their project. Before opening the green-screen app they selected, students should find or capture images or video they want to appear in their project’s background and save them to the device they use to record their green-screen video.
2. To create a simple green-screen production, have students create a single green slide in PowerPoint and project that on the screen in the classroom. This allows students to act out the scene in front of the projected green screen. A bulletin board with green paper also works well for this purpose.
3. Have students open their green-screen app and create a new project. (If the app asks students to allow it to access the device’s microphone and camera, they should select OK.) Most apps, like Do Ink’s Green Screen, have a divided timeline that features multiple layers that include at least a separate background source and foreground source.
TEACHING TIP
Have students start planning their multimedia work by having them complete a short storyboard that depicts what they plan to create. Make sure all students get approval of their storyboard from you before they start recording. Our team finds that storyboards drawn on paper help the group stay more focused when recording video.
4. Students should choose a source image or video for their background layer and add it to the timeline. This source will appear in place of the green screen in the final video.
5. Tell students to use the available app controls to ensure the background image properly replaces the green screen. This includes cropping or editing their source content and adjusting a chroma key filter, the technical name for green screen, to filter out the correct shade of green that your green screen uses.
6. Students should record or add video they want to use in the foreground layer. This usually features a student or student group presenting information the students researched that pairs with the background image or video they selected.
TECH TIPS
To learn more about using a green screen in your classroom, conduct a web search on how to green screen. There are many online videos to help with this process. You can simply create an inexpensive green screen using a green tablecloth or green fabric. If you want to go a step further, you can purchase special kits that come with green screens and lighting packages.
Remind students not to wear green when they record themselves. Green-screen apps cannot differentiate a person wearing green, or other green objects in the foreground, from the physical green screen and will swap the green clothing or object out with the background source.
7. As students complete their projects, they should also implement other advanced edits such as adding multiple audio tracks and clever transitions between scenes. Encourage students to experiment with the features their platform supports and share their expertise with other students in other classes.
8. When complete, students should publish their work to the classroom LMS.
Connections
You can apply this lesson to different content areas in the following suggested ways.
• English language arts: Ask students to use a short green-screen video to recreate an historical fiction novel that they read. For example, students can be the characters in the story and then set up against pictures or video set in the time period of the book.
• Science: Introduce students to The Magic School Bus cartoon character, Ms. Frizzle (The Magic School Bus Wiki, n.d.). Have them familiarize themselves with the character and then plan how they can model their review of a science topic in a way similar to what Ms. Frizzle would do. Students should creatively use advanced video-editing concepts to produce a movie, music video, or newscast as they create a product connected to Ms. Frizzle’s approach.
• Social science: Have students create a video based on a current event. The video should include a newscast with green-screen effects that explains basic information on the event. Students can also include interviews they do with others or even create commercials that connect with the current event and demonstrate their understanding of it.
• Career and technical education: In any technical course, have students create and share a short video about the skills they learn in each unit. Encourage students to try and make something technical into something humorous. Students should share videos to the classroom LMS first and then post them to a classroom YouTube channel so you can share them with future classes.
Using Audio to Enhance Understanding
Students who can successfully solve problems know how to think about what they do and describe why they do it. Having the ability to verbally explain their thought process also promotes students’ organizational and speaking skills, which leads to deeper understanding of classroom material. In an article at Edutopia, fifth-grade teacher Marissa King (2016) writes about the power of using audio to reach all classroom learners. Specifically, she details how students can use audio for brainstorming, refining their individual voices, practice and revision, and self-assessment. Given the importance of audio to classroom learning, it’s important that we provide high school students with frequent opportunities to explain their thought processes as we prepare them for college and career.
Novice: Proving Mastery Through Spoken Audio
Learning goal:
I can use audio tools to verbally demonstrate my understanding of a topic.
The ability to convey understanding in a concise and organized manner is a hard skill to teach but one that will take students far in their education and future career. For example, today people are building successful careers as podcasters spreading their messages and beliefs online as they pick up sponsors and support their families basically by recording and sharing audio files. Learning how to explain your point of view by recording a simple audio file is a skill students can use in an online course or a job interview. To that end, we designed this lesson to allow students opportunities to explain their thinking in their own words. For example, students could explain a new invention or product idea in an entrepreneurial course similar to the show Shark Tank. Students can also add different wrinkles to these verbal tasks by conducting and recording an interview or a roundtable discussion with experts outside of the classroom. (Check with your department chair about students’ allowed cell-phone use before planning this lesson.)
Many digital devices have voice-recording features built in, but many do not. For example, iPhones include a Voice Memos app by default, but iPads do not. Fortunately, no matter what devices your students use, you can locate a simple voice-recording app for it. We recommend Chirbit (www.chirbit.com), QuickVoice (www.nfinityinc.com/quickvoiceip.html), Showbie (www.showbie.com), and Seesaw (https://web.seesaw.me). Whichever app you choose, make sure you feel comfortable enough with it to explain to students how to locate and open it, stop and start recording with it, and access and share recordings.
Process: Recording a Spoken Audio Clip
Use the following five steps to teach students how to record a short, spoken audio presentation and store it online.
1. Ask students to pick a topic, select a recording platform, and develop a plan for their recording. These plans can be as simple as writing down a simple bulleted outline of topics on a piece of paper.
2. Students should press the record button and begin speaking.
3. When they finish recording, students should click on the stop button to end their recording.
4. Depending on the app’s features, students should save the resulting audio file and export it to the online storage platform your classroom uses. This could be a classroom LMS or a dedicated cloud-based storage platform, like Google Drive.
5. Allow students to listen to other students’ recordings outside of class and nominate a few of the best clips. Play those clips in class and feature the best of the best on your class’s website.
Connections
You can apply this lesson to different content areas in the following suggested ways.
TEACHING TIP
Students can use the voice-recording skills they demonstrate in this lesson to prepare for the speaking portion of advanced-placement (AP) foreign language tests. Listening to recorded clips of the language they are studying is a simple, effective way for students to review and refine their pronunciation.
• Mathematics: Have student pairs read a mathematics problem out loud and record themselves discussing how to solve the problem. Students can then take turns each discussing how to complete a step in the process, back and forth, until they reach the solution to the problem. By speaking and listening in this way, students learn to better explain and justify their solutions.
• Foreign language: Have students create a voice-recorded online journal, demonstrating their mastery of speaking skills in the language they study. To practice specific fluency skills at different times during the year, and help students measure their progress, give students a statement or paragraph to record themselves reading.
TECH TIP
If your classroom doesn’t use devices with access to audio-recording apps and your school does not permit individual cell-phone use, consider using free audio-recording software like Audacity (www.audacityteam.org), which is available for both Windows and macOS systems, to complete this process.
• Career and technical education: In a health science class, have students create audio recordings that reflect their ability to pronounce medications and procedures for patients. Review students’ recordings and offer feedback. At the end of the course, students can use their best clips to showcase what they learned during the course and even include them as part of a digital resume.
Operational: Pairing Audio With Animated Elements
Learning goal:
I can combine audio I record with animation to better explain my learning.
Instead of just an audio file to demonstrate learning, in this lesson students will use specialized tools to create an animated avatar that can speak the audio students record. Using specialized tools that pair audio with animation can maintain student interest in learning while allowing for even more student voice and choice. For this lesson, introduce students to tools like Tellagami (https://tellagami.com), Voki (www.voki.com), or Blabberize (http://blabberize.com) and have them create avatars that they pair with their own recorded audio to explain concepts they have learned in the classroom. Not only does this allow students to get creative in how they demonstrate their learning, but it also provides a way for shy students or students with anxiety issues to express themselves without physically making themselves the center of attention.
Process: Combining Audio and Animation
Use the following three steps to teach students how to connect audio they record with an animated avatar.
1. Tell students to select an app that lets them record audio and pair it with animation. Because many of the tools for this process have limited audio-recording times, have students create a short introduction to a topic for their avatar to speak.
2. Have students set up the animation they want to use. This can include building an avatar of themselves, another person, or even an animal, as well as selecting a background setting or other on-screen elements.
3. Instruct students to record their audio clips and pair them with the avatar they created. Recording the audio clips should be done outside of the classroom to avoid recording in a noisy environment. Most apps have a simple export feature or provide means to link to the final clip by sharing it on the classroom LMS. These clips are also fun for students to post on social media.
Connections
You can apply this lesson to different content areas in the following suggested ways.
TEACHING TIP
Give students the opportunity to search for other tools similar to Tellagami and Voki that allow them to record audio that demonstrates their learning through fun, creative means. Students should share the apps they find with each other and think of creative ways to use them to make connections with curricula, clubs, or sports.
• English language arts: After students read a novel, have them create an audio project with animation that features their avatar or another animated character discussing the novel. This project could include their answers to discussion questions you pose, their own questions they want to ask about the text, their analysis of the characters, or their view on the plot.
• Science: Have students complete a lab report as an audio file and pair the audio with animations that depict the work they did in the lab. For example, one student can create an avatar of a famous scientist while the group’s other members develop and conduct a virtual question-and-answer session with the famous avatar.
• Music: Have students record themselves playing or singing a new piece of music and then pair that recording with an animation in one of the apps. They can include this creative example of their work in a project or digital portfolio as a way to draw attention to it.
• Career and technical education: Have students in a web-design course create avatars for a website to greet visitors with a specific message based on the website’s content. For example, the school mascot could greet visitors on the school’s home sports page.
Wow: Producing Collaborative Audio
One of the ultimate ways to demonstrate audio-production skills is to create podcasts. A podcast is an ongoing audio discussion that listeners subscribe and listen to that generally features multiple episodes. In this lesson, students will create a podcast by recording and editing audio that includes both music and discussion. This process will not only sharpen their presentation and sequencing skills but also help them practice speaking skills, like conducting roundtable discussions and interviews.
Learning goal:
I can collaborate to create an original podcast that includes music, narration, and discussion.
Because podcasts require some form of online hosting, podcasting is typically not a free enterprise, but many podcasting platforms do allow users to try out podcasting for free. For this lesson, we suggest exposing students to multiple podcast platforms and letting them choose the one that works best for them. We recommend three: (1) Podbean (www.podbean.com), (2) SoundCloud (https://soundcloud.com), and (3) Spreaker (www.spreaker.com). Each of these platforms requires students to create an account using an email address. You could instead have students simulate a podcast environment by using an audio-mixing tool like Audacity (www.audacityteam.org) or Apple’s GarageBand (www.apple.com/mac/garageband) to record a podcast and simply post it to the classroom LMS.
Process: Recording and Mixing a Podcast
Use the following six steps to teach students how to record, mix, and share a podcast.
1. For homework, have students research podcasts and record three things they noticed about those podcasts in the discussion forum of the classroom LMS.
2. Have student pairs work as partners to plan and record their own podcast on a topic in the unit they are studying.
3. Instruct students to pick a podcast platform and spend time planning their content with their partner.
4. Give students guidelines for what you want them to accomplish with their podcast—for example, should they include multiple audio streams, like narration and music? How long should their podcast be? Should the podcast include specific elements like interviews with individuals from outside the classroom?
5. Have students record their podcast and use the tools available to them to review their audio and mix it to add royalty-free music, sound effects, or other elements that enhance the production.
6. Have students publish and share their podcast. This can include posting the audio to a classroom LMS or using the podcast platform’s tools to make it available online for wider audiences to find and listen to.
Connections
You can apply this lesson to different content areas in the following suggested ways.
TEACHING TIP
Because of the frenetic activity that often goes on in the classroom, allow students time and space to record their podcast at home or at a location that suits their podcast’s theme.
• Mathematics: Instruct students to collaborate to create a podcast that explains how to solve an equation in two different real-world settings. Consider organizing students into groups and assigning each group a different topic from a single unit so that, when combined, students’ podcast episodes cover all the topics in the unit.
• Social science: Have students collaborate to create a weekly podcast on current events. Depending on the class you are teaching, let students select the events that match the course objectives. Encourage them to share their work using social media so they can connect with an authentic audience.
• Career and technical education: Have students in a digital media course work in groups to organize a podcast about the school’s morning announcements that they can post to the school website to highlight each day’s announcements. Put different student groups in charge of organizing and planning the production each day.
Combining Multimedia Elements to Create Effective Presentations
The only thing worse than sitting through thirty similar slide presentations is sitting through more than one hundred bad slide presentations, all on the same topic. As students prepare for life after high school, they need to be ready to find information, prepare it, and present their findings in a format that not only demonstrates their understanding but also reaches their intended audience in a way that the audience will best receive and comprehend the information. This means that students need to know how to choose the most appropriate ways to combine and present multiple media forms (such as text, images, audio, and video) and the most efficient form of publishing so their audience can access the published work.
This NOW lesson set helps students strengthen their presentation skills and put together products that use different forms of media in innovative ways. It starts with creating simple presentations that are focused on delivering information to an audience, then layers in using multiple forms of media while enhancing delivery, and then has students record and share presentations with outside audiences.
For these lessons, it is essential that you help guide students as they choose presentation topics by breaking down a larger unit of study into subtopics that you assign to students. Each presentation’s content should link directly to students’ assigned topics to avoid long-winded presentations that spend too much time on general, information overviews. A good presentation length at the high school level is between three and five minutes.
Novice: Creating Simple Presentations
Learning goal:
I can demonstrate my understanding of a topic by creating and publishing a text-based slideshow presentation.
This lesson’s purpose is to help students learn about planning, organizing, creating, and delivering a presentation in front of the class. Some students in high school have created presentations using a slide deck before, but in this lesson the focus is on creating a quality presentation focused on content and data rather than style and flair. Students should know and research their presentation topics before using technology to build their presentations.
Students will prepare a presentation that demonstrates their knowledge of a topic, focus on incorporating only one form of media into the presentation (text is generally most effective for this), and then publish the presentation.
Students can choose from multiple tools to build an effective presentation. These include common office productivity apps like PowerPoint (https://products.office.com/en-us/powerpoint), Google Slides (www.google.com/slides/about), and Keynote (www.apple.com/keynote).
Process: Making a Presentation
Use the following five steps to help students create a simple, effective presentation.
TEACHING TIPS
To keep the rest of the class engaged during the presentations, create a shared document for student feedback, clarification, and questions and answers. This type of backchanneling takes practice, but it helps develop students’ ability to provide useful feedback.
Remember to keep students focused on clear delivery that is specifically tied to the subtopic they worked on.
1. Have students decide on a presentation topic or assign a different topic to each student. For this lesson, students will create a short, three-to-five-minute presentation with a specific focus on aligning the research and the presentation content to the sub-topic assigned to them.
