This is my second pecha kucha attempt. Last spring I used it for this class as a wrap up and felt it was quite successful and insightful. My last class is on December 3rd but I thought I’d better model one for my students.
While I tried using the Keynote recording function, I was having trouble exporting to Quicktime and retaining the sound. Not sure what I did wrong. The flash export worked well but when I went home to record, not having a second screen meant not seeing my speaker notes. Doing it “off the cuff” ended up with too many “ums” and “ahs”. Just another reminder of the power of planning and the challenge of audio recording. When you’re under a time crunch you can’t afford to stray.
I finally exported the sans sound quicktime and added the narration in iMovieHD.
The big idea that resonated most with me is that “learning is personal and self-directed”. I have spent the last 34 years trying to both implement and push that concept – in classrooms, with students and teachers, and at systemic levels. It sounds simple. It makes sense. It’s so incredibly hard to pull off at the institution level.
The biggest sticking-point is the role of the teacher. If learners are expected to be self-directed, do they need teachers? Yes, yes, yes – they most certainly do! I think the teacher has very crucial roles to play in facilitating self-directed learning.
Anticipate and plan. Even with prescribed curricula, teachers can anticipate where the students will be hooked. They need to plan for branching-off points, and multiple and varied demonstrations of learning.
Coordinate. Manage time, resources and experiences to allow for exploration. Learners don’t know at the outset where their interests lie. They need to play, explore, experiment, ask questions, connect, think…
Observe. Teachers need to take note of the questions that are being asked and teach the strategies needed to push those questions to higher levels of thinking. They need to engage students in experiences that will help them to build the frameworks and networks needed to answer their own questions.
Model. Every single day teachers need to model their own strategies, skills, frameworks and networks as they learn with and from their students.
Now, there’s a mindset that will prepare teachers for a truly rewarding and exciting career!
Hi Dean – loved your idea of doing a pecha kucha as a final course reflection. It has been interesting watching the pecha kucha movement evolve and it is great to see it used in courses. I wanted to move away from a final podcast in my on-line course and will give this a try.
I could not agree more with your comments and would emphasize that it is due to your design that the social dimension of on-line learning stands out. (in my experience, a lot of on-line learning – particularly in post-secondary education – has taken the worst of our dominant classroom practices and added technology – the result, unfortunately, is even worse than what occurs in many didactic classroom environments.)
A quick comment on Keynote – the present version of quicktime and keynote have a quirk – the export to quicktime will no longer capture both image and sound. Like you, I have found that the workaround is to use iMovie but it does take a little more time. Hopefully Apple with fix this bug in the near future (perhaps with a new Keynote upgrade)
Finally, I watch your blog and stories about the innovations that you are involved in with great interest and excitement. Keep up the great work.
Thanks for sharing! I hope my presentation turns out 1/2 as good as yours. 🙂
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