Gary B's Ed Tech Portfolio

Tutorial: Academic Writing and Basic MLA Format

Since making this tutorial, I have never had a problem with getting at least 99% of my students' writing assignments done in the proper format. One of the reasons for this is because it includes sub-titles. Students have told me that the sub-titles are very helpful.

This tutorial is successful because it includes carefully considered kinesthetic, auditory, and visual components that are much stronger, clearer, and effective than usual. Based on my experience in Special Education, I speculated that a video that included emphasis on all three of these learning styles might be more useful for language learners than the usual stuff that is commonly posted online. To address the kinesthetic learning style, students were instructed to have their word processors open while watching the tutorial and use the video playback pause button while following the step by step instructions on their keyboards. This learning style has always worked for me, so I assumed that it may work for others.

To support the auditory style, I used clearly articulated and slightly slower speech, with no background noises or audio distractions. To enhance the visual component, I used colourful animated callouts, zoom-n-pan, and English subtitles that were easily generated with a high quality super-cardioid condenser microphone and standard speech recognition software. In the first semester this tutorial was used, forty “beginner” level students worked through it and achieved a 100% success rate, with all writing assignments being formatted according to MLA standards. In the next semester (Fall 2012) the results were similar. As a result of these great outcomes, I plan to use a multi-sensory approach for all future video tutorials.

Virtual Office / Virtual Workshops for Spring 2013

Because this is my first interactive video that uses the latest technology and includes a quiz that provides immediate feedback, I think it is important enough to post on both the front page and here (in case you missed it). If you've already seen it - and scored 100% on the quiz - feel free to scroll down and check out some of the other ones.

Tutorial: Navigating the Course Page

This tour video was made at the beginning of the Spring 2013 semester. It showed students how to navigate our course page, LearnBlog. Not only did this video help students learn how to find their way around the site, but I also learned that pop filters should be used when recording voice overs. ;-)

Tutorial: How to Set Up a Google Gmail Account

As I was becoming aware of the power of Google Gmail accounts, I made this quick tutorial to help my students to set up their own. Although I encouraged the students to use only English, I did not insist on it at the time of recording. That changed in later semesters.

VIDEO TUTORIALS

My Flipped Rationale

A language is acquired by using it, so rather than force students to listen to me give long lectures while they could actually be using English to communicate with each other, I try to put as much lecture material as possible into digital format, then provide a way for students to watch those videos when they are at home - and unable to practice using English with their friends in the classroom.

This is very similar to the "flipped classroom" model that is gaining a lot of serious interest among educators all around the world. Salman Khan (of Khan Academy) gave a very famous TED Talk on this subject in 2011.

Here is that talk:

Following are more "flipped classroom" videos. The top one is a Google Hangout with Stanford professors Peter Norvig and Sebastian Thrun, who discuss the future of technology in higher education with folks from 7 other universities.

A Google search of "flipped classroom" generates 3,970,000 results. Here are a few:

Flipped Classroom Pros & Cons

UBC: Flipped Classroom

Wikipedia: Flipped Classroom

Producing Tutorials: Some Historical Background

Many years ago, when I was still in high school, I lived in a small logging camp located near a Canadian Forces station known as CFS Holberg. It was a very small, isolated, close knit military community at the northern end of Vancouver Island.

There were not enough high school aged students there to support the existence of a local high school, so my 7 high school friends and I had to attend school 2.5 hours away (accessible only via a narrow, rocky, unpaved road) in a logging community known as Port McNeill. We stayed in a dormitory during the week and went home on weekends.

On weekends, the main center of activity at CFS Holberg was the Recreation Centre, which housed a coffee shop, bowling alley, gymnasium, movie theatre, and radio station.

My friend Mike, who lived on the base because his father was a Major, told me that he had a volunteer job there as a weekend announcer and that one of the other announcers was quitting. He told me that I should talk to Corporal Cyr, who was the station manager (and also one of the base's military police officers).

After pumping up my courage and self-confidence (plus double checking to make sure that I wasn't guilty of any crimes) I went to see Corporal Cyr. That was the beginning of my radio career, which extended past high school and into an actual paying job that lasted for more than 5 years. Of course, I thought I was destined to become a big-time star in the entertainment industry, and, of course, that never happened.

However, it did teach me about voice - and how to use your voice to send messages. My radio career also taught me how to smile when I speak into the microphone so listeners can actually hear the smile and feel the warmth. I also learned about good audio production techniques that are essential for effective advertising and image building.

Those are the same techniques that I use in my video tutorials. Of course, because I'm not in "the biz" any more, I'm not as well practiced as I once was with audio production, but I do my best to project warmth, clarity, and energy with the videos I produce.

An ePortfolio of Educational Technology "If we teach today as we taught yesterday, we rob our children of tomorrow." John Dewey