Microteaching activity

This week I've been at the NMC conference (and Monday I was sidelined with a summer cold, no fun), so I've skipped out on most of this week's fslt12 activities. I've been thinking about this microteaching activity, and what I can teaching in 10 minutes. The activity reminds me of a reality TV show, the next Food Network Star, where contestants have to show that they can do something, in a short period of time (a promo video for their show) that they would be expanding on (supposedly) during the full episode.

So, what could I teach in 10 minutes? The big issue is that I am thinking too big! Then, it hit me! I could go back to my tech-training background and show people how to use the cameras in their iPhones. Sure, it's not super academic, but what if I were an assistant for DS106? DS106 has the Daily Create activity, where learners in DS106 (and interested participants) can use their phones to participate in this activity. So, here is a quick 10 minute lesson plan:

1. Greet learners (this would be a video tutorial, perhaps on YouTube) and let them know the agenda for this lesson, as well as the tools that we are going to be using (think of it like a cooking show where they list the ingredients before they start cooking). The materials for this are an iPhone, the camera application, the Safari Web Browser, and FlickIt, a Free Flickr Uploader application for the iPhone. (Time: 45sec -1 min)

2. This lesson pre-supposes that learners are taking part in DS106, or are interested in the daily create challenge. The first thing would be to open safari and navigate to http://tdc.ds106.us/ to receive the daily challenge topic. (Time: 1 min)

3. Once the topic of the day has been received, I will demonstrate how the learner can:

  • Open the iPhone camera application
  • Frame a shot
  • Zoom in and our
  • Focus the shor
  • Take the shot
Side note: I was thinking about using Instagram for taking the photo, but the initial setup of the application could be a tutorial in and of itself :) (Time for this part: 3 minutes)

 

4. One a photo has been taken, it's time to show the learner how to upload it to flickr, and tag it with the appropriate Daily Create tag for that day's assignment (time: 3 minutes). This could include:

  • Navigating to FlickIt
  • Selecting the photo from the camera roll
  • Telling Flickr that it's a public photo
  • Assigning the photo a specific tag
  • Uploading it

5. Final step: at the end of the day, check out the Daily Create website for fellow participant submissions!

 

The target demographic for this type of learning activity would be someone who is (1) interested in the daily create, and (2) someone like a parent or grandparent who "doesn't do technology" but is interested in participating in such fun activities.

 

The assessment, of course, would be whether the photo is up on the daily create or not :)

Comments

Apostolos K. ("AK") said…
I enjoyed your food show analogy! Well, due to your lesson I learnt somemthing new!
June 18, 2012 at 2:19 PM
Apostolos K. ("AK") said…
Hi Apostolos - I enjoyed reading this. Do you think you will actually make the videos? I think they would be useful - they would be to me. I think I'm in that grandparent range and I would be particularly interested in knowing more about Instragram.

I like the way you have broken this down into a very clearly structured sequence and also how you have thought through the timings. As you say - its much harder to create something short than long - a bit like it's harder to only be given 1250 words for an essay rather than 3000.

Your assessment is very straightforward - so I think this works very well.

Thanks for sharing.

Jenny
June 19, 2012 at 7:09 AM
Apostolos K. ("AK") said…
I've been watching too much "the next Food Network Star" - but it was a good analogy :)
June 20, 2012 at 11:51 AM
Apostolos K. ("AK") said…
Thanks Jenny.  I think I might create a powerpoint presentation (kind of a rapid prototype type of thing) for the presentation this week, but no actual video until much much much later on.  Maybe this will be something that I create for a future course :)
June 20, 2012 at 11:53 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Latour: Third Source of Uncertainty - Objects have agency too!

Image
Continuing on my exploration of ANT, and asynchronous and indirect dialogue with Latour - this blog post will cover the third source of uncertainty, which according to Latour, is that Objects have agency too! As with the previous blog posts, I've pulled out quotes from the book that seemed interesting, or that I reacted to in some way, and I am responding to them here. no tie can be said to be durable and made of social stuff (p. 66) This quote seems to continue Latour's assertion that there is no such thing as "social" or "social stuff" and that "social", or the meaning of needs to be negotiated and better understood.  It also continues the thought that social can only be seen from the actions of its actors, the traces they leave behind, and that these bonds are not durable because they need continuous reinforcement. I guess Social is a perishable item. Left to its own devices, a power relationship that mobilizes nothing but social skil...
Read more

MOOC participation - open door policy and analytics

The other day I was reading ZML Didaktik on the topic of MOOC participants. In MOOCs, one of the big questions is why are people lurking and not participating? If more than 500 people join a MOOC, why are only 10% contributing with any amount of regularity?  On the same blog, in a previous blog post, I had commented (it was an open stream of thought really) that perhaps there should be an open enrollment period, and then if the system sees that certain participants are bellow a threshold of activity, the system may give them the option to self-identify as a lurker, or un-register from the class. This line of thought went along a view that compared to the traditional classroom; in a traditional classroom students register for the course, they can attend classes for a week and then decide whether or not they want to stay with the course or not. If they do stay with the course they know that there is a certain amount of "lurking" that they can get away with, but they do have ...
Read more

You've been punk'd! However, that was an educational experience

Image
It's now the end of Teaching Goes Massive: New Skills Required (aka #massiveteaching) on coursera. Well, almost, we still have a couple of days left. I guess that the lesson here is that we were (the "learners") were punk'd† by Paul-Olivier Dehaye of the Univerisity of Zurich. After that last blog post (and subsequent pickup of the post by George Siemens and others) Inside Higher Education and the Chronicle wanted to chat with me about this MOOC experience. I only had time for one of the two before things went to press, so my 15 minutes of fame went to IHE.  Both IHE and the C hronicle have written about the topic, and have received some information from Coursera on the incident.  Others have also written about it (see here , here and here ) It's surprising to me that the University, and Coursera, waited until after this thing was a big issue in order to respond in the class, and clue people into what was happening. On Wednesday (day 3 of Week 3/3 of the ...
Read more