persuasive (not gratuitous) technologies

Can you use technology this well to ignite your students? Well, it certainly is inspiring, and it shows that visuals really can illuminate ideas. It is a mashup of technologies, including even PowerPoint, but not gratuitous technologies added just to show that Rosling is hip or clever–the combination is as persuasive as the speaker, and I know that’s how you really want to use technology, too.

Filed under: aesthetics, cognition, communication, education, learning, presentation, teaching, technology

Howard Rheingold’s Vlog

more about "Howard Rheingold’s Vlog", posted with vodpod

I think you will find this discussion of 21st Century Literacies very interesting–they might not be what you think they are. Note the section on attention and think about how you feel when your students are seemingly distracted by the technologies at hand. Now imagine what your online students might be doing as you are teaching an online course. How will you deal with the issue of attention in that situation?

Filed under: cognition, collaboration, computers, digital literacy, learning, learning styles, literacy, technology

should you remove your talking head?

My, that sounds a little painful, but it might be in your students’ best interest.

There’s been an interesting thread on the NMC (New Media Consortium) listserv (please read this post about our membership in the NMC) about whether a talking head in an online presentation–think Presenter or Connect–is a distraction to students/attendees.

[Removed a video of my own talking head for vanity reasons--bad lighting, etc. I was just musing about the value of my talking head in this post. Next time, I'll have my avatar speak.]

One argument cites this research on the eye movement of online viewers: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/video.html If the article research is true that watching is a passive mode, then we should think hard about whether the presence of the speaker’s talking head creates a passive response instead of an active engagement with the presentation content. Of course, if the presentation is recorded, we have to work hard to make it interactive, but at the least, taking notes during the presentation, even if the slides are being copied, is active.

Anecdotally, I have, myself, been mesmerized by a talking head in a recorded presentation and missed some slide material, having to go back once I shook off the trance.

The counterargument refers to lecturers whose dynamic presence positively influences learning, but are we capturing that kind of presence with only a small talking head in a corner module? One post cites Richard Mayer’s The Cambridge Handbook of Multimedia Learning (2005) as supporting little effect from the small head image. Another post cites and attaches one of Mayer’s articles, “Nine Ways to Reduce Cognitive Load in Multimedia Learning” (Educational Psychologist 38(1): 43-52. © 2003, Erlbaum.), which discusses the possibility of cognitive overload in processing material in multimedia environments.

What do you think about all this as you struggle to create presentations? I’m wondering if we can have the talking head come in at appropriate moments–those moments when we might pause in the material and ask viewers a question to make them stop and think. In a recorded session, this could be during a poll or quiz. Or it could be a moment when you ask viewers to write a short response, one of several, all to be submitted to you after the entire presentation.

I’m not ready to say “off with their heads” yet, but neither do I think we should use them without due consideration of their effect.

Filed under: cognition, communication, education, pedagogy, student-centered learning, technology

subway lines and random paths of meaning

Don’t know how long this interactive map of subway ends-of-line images will be up on the NYTimes online, so go see it soon.

I find this to be a perfect example of setting up material–in this case images of what you would find at the ends of subway lines in New York–that does not suggest sequential choices, but allows the user to choose random paths in the content, and allows for revisiting the material as desired. One of my interests is in how users make meaning out of content this way and how they reinforce their interpretations based on the paths they choose. For example, does it make a difference to one’s constructed meaning whether one image is viewed before another, and so on? In another example, does it make a difference in what order one reads about historical events to how one determines larger meanings and attitudes about history?

In what sort of controlled environment could we study such questions?

Filed under: cognition, collaboration, communication, computers, digital literacy, hypertext, student-centered learning, technology