Author Archives: cartierd

Feb 17 2019
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322monday20

5 QUICK STEPS TO BECOMING A TECHNOLOGIST (NUMBER 4 MAY SURPRISE YOU!) ft. POWTOON

For this multimedia reflection I decided to try out Powtoon after hearing about it in several classes over the past two years. For those who don’t know Powtoon is a flashy power-point variant that gives you the option to present your work in the form of a video.

Take a look:

A Link to Daniel Cartier's Powtoon

Wow! Pretty cool right?! Makes you just wanna make one right this second yeah? Welllllll…

 

You see Powtoon is a freemium model which means you can pay for extra features with either a PRO or PRO+ membership, which allows you to unlock different backgrounds, music, clipart, and export features (such as download). This actually made the creation of the Powtoon harder because ideas I had would be squashed by what was available to me as a free user.

 

However, perhaps your wondering is Powtoon is worth buying into?

Powtoon's Pricing Structure. $16 at the cheapest?!

…Yeah no…

Because much of Powtoon is locked behind a paywall I think it may end up being a bit infuriating to use, as students are going to naturally want to use content that they cannot within the free version.

It should be stated however that if you want to do the legwork and find your own videos and images you are allowed to import them but videos cannot come from Youtube which means every video needs to be downloaded and re-uploaded…something that is just not feasible on classroom WiFi.

In my opinion Powtoon was little more exciting that creating a power-point and some of the free user woes really soured my opinion of it. Was the final product cool? Yes. Would my students want to possibly create one of their own? Sure. But as we look at Powtoon through the CONNECT phase of Design Learning the flaws mean that is really not feasible until the intermediate grades where even still the actual execution is not worth the end result.

Thank you for listening to my Ted Talk.

/rant

 

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Oct 28 2018
2 Comments
322monday20

Data-Driven Explained Through Data Presented Education STARRING: Mindomo

For this post I decided to showcase mindomo to present the information of Data-Driven Education by Khurram Virani. The reason I chose to present through Mindomo is because it is a program supported for mindmapping by both the Public AND the Catholic Board here in Windsor (you can trust me, I did the training!). Thus I thought it would be fun to showcase something teachers can use with their students no matter where their placements will be.

The program is fairly intuitive allowing for keyboard shortcuts to add new content bubbles as well as on screen buttons. It also allows for the direct linking of media from youtube or google image search, making customization easy. The app even has an iPad version :O!

The only problem I have with mindomo is that it can be a bit jarring for students who are used to working with mindmaps in the round, as mindomo works in either a linear or tiered model. Linear having farther removed ideas being farther from the center in a line (as shown on the mindmap created below), and tiered making it look something like a tournament bracket rather than an actual mindmap.

You can click here to see the full range of ideas discussed in the video but I believe the biggest take away from this video is that education does not take enough risks. It likes to stay within tried and true methods (much like this blogpost) rather than reaching out and risking failure. I would argue that just as last weeks blog post encouraged students not to fear failure we should also be teaching our teachers the same thing, as failure is how we adapt and innovate. If education fails to do this I fear it will always be just a few steps behind of where the world is today, let alone where it is headed tomorrow.

What ideas/beliefs make you react the way you do

These ideas come from the philosophy that failure is a learning opportunity, not necessarily just a result. It is the way we as humans learn what doesn’t work and, in doing so, continue striving for a better answer.

What were your ideas before

My ideas before related to data driven education were skeptical at first. I had seen many times algorithms fail and send me ads for things I did not care about. Relating it to education, I worried it would be much the same, striking many false positives and derailing a students education with misrepresented ques.

What pieces of new information did you find?

What I found was it is less about collecting all the data available, but selecting which data points are important for education. This would be like if the ad search looked at my open shopping carts on websites for information on what to advertise rather than the one off conversation I had with a friend.  What also resonated with me was the ideas that schools still cannot properly teach their students for the world ahead, let alone what is coming, due to the need to test and retest and confirm before they are willing to push any boundaries.

Sep 30 2018
5 Comments
322monday20

Too Long ; Did Reimagine: The Meme-Note Version of Ashley Hinck’s “Digital Ghosts in the Modern Classroom” (NOW WITH MORE IRONY!)

Greetings and hello fellow bloggers,

For this week’s assignment I decided to work to highlight the important pieces of the article within problematically-template-crafted and mildly informative memes.

I tried to hit the most important points including:

The Evaluation of Template Software:

A "Matrix Morpheus" Meme describing that the use of template softwares is not true digital media creation

Only when we are truly lost can we be found.

 

The deconstruction of the “open-ended” project:

A "Success Kid" Meme discussing the dangers of guided open ended projects

A project that appears to have the breadth of an ocean, but in actuality covers the area of a swimming pool is still, for all intents and purposes, a worksheet.

 

The Problematic Traditional Teaching Mindset

A "Patrick Placement" Meme discussing the Traditional Model of Education.

“Traditional school culture and the banking model of education…views students as containers to be filled with correct answers by teachers.” Ashley Hinck

How Students Choose to Operate:

An "alternate girlfriend" meme focused on students choosing template softwares over their own digital creation.

Students are looking to finish work in the easiest and most stress free manner. They are not doing your 5% assignment to feel fulfilled.

 

How Students Feel When Their Usual Tools Are Removed

An "Is this a bird?" Meme focusing on the fact that students will feel uneasy when the "training wheels" have been removed, perceiving natural progress as failure.

“When students assume there are linear, standard steps to follow, students perceive their hesitancy and trial-and-error as a failure, rather than an unavoidable and important part of the digital making process.” Ashley Hinck

 

And Finally, the Solution:

An "Expanding Brain" Meme highlighting the dangers of simply removing drag and drop programs from a project while still expecting the same level of work.

It is not enough to simply remove the training wheels. We must also give them an environment where they are free to practice judgement free.

 

To create these memes I used a site called imgflip.com that allowed me to pick my template from the archive of the internet and form fill my memes to be exactly what I wanted.

A screenshot showing the easy to use interface of imgflip.com

Easy as top-text, bottom-text, laughter

 

While I am a proud meme-dad to all present here, “The Solution” is by far my favorite son/daughter/digital-entity because it discusses the problem of just analyzing this situation at face value. If as a teacher you notice your students rarely branch from their “comfort-zone apps” and your way of getting them out of that comfort-zone is just to remove them from use, you are going about this completely wrong. Creation is scary, especially for those who have never done so unassisted and on their own before. ADDING THE PRESSURE OF A GRADE DOESN’T CHANGE THAT! Thus, we must create new projects that revel more in trying out a program and experimenting with its strengths and weaknesses rather than continuing to grade a finished project.

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