In this week’s post, I want to expand more on the power of sketchnoting on the learning of children.

What is a sketchnote? Sketchnotes are rich visual notes created from a mix of handwriting, drawings, hand-drawn typography, shapes, and visual elements like arrow, boxes, and lines. In a sketchnote, handwriting, drawings, arrows, color, all working together to enhance the learning experience of a learner. A student might use it to process information visually, use bold lettering for key points, and making boxes for special points. Basically, they can use it for anything that makes the information pop off the page and stick to the brain.

From my personal experience, I remember I was doing random sketching on classes. No matter what I sketch, I feel like I’m making process on something. It is like brainstorming that really light my ideas. Sketchnoting allows me to see the bigger picture in the concepts, and make connections in my learning. I think sketchnote can help maintain focus and retain information as well. Skerchnoting can be a great way to synthesize and study written nots, using visuals to recreate pages of note, such as highlighting.

Here’s a video that demonstrate the benefits of sketchnoting

The principles I learned this week is very practical when I comes to creating high quality PowerPoint slides and how to deliver them.

As noted in a study, the key principles are brevity, cogency and clarity and slide shows should supplement a presentation instead of substitute for it (Grech, 2018). There are some principles I think can apply to PowerPoint slides. The Coherence principle: Audiences learn better when extraneous words, picture and sounds are excluded. This ties in with the Redundancy principle: People learn better from graphics and narration than from graphics, narration and on-screen text. IN slide shows, this is related to the Modality principle; graphics and narrations are better than animation and on-screen text, and to the Multimedia principle; text and pictures are superior to text alone. So in summary, in order of preference, use graphics and add text if necessary and animations only if absolutely necessary.

Here is a video of how to construct a good PowerPoint presentation.

Reference:

Grech, V. (2018). The application of the Mayer multimedia learning theory to medical PowerPoint slide show presentations. Journal of Visual Communication in Medicine, 41(1), 36–41. https://doi.org/10.1080/17453054.2017.1408400

In this post I want to show some of my understandings of the teaching technology Canva, and how does it help teachers in their classrooms. At the second part of this post, I used my poster as an example to illustrate how some learning principles can be used in creating a visual learning resource.

Canva is a graphic design platform, users can create social media graphics, posters, infographics and other visual content. It’s clear that Canva has made its way into classrooms as a technology for teachers who wish to create visually stimulating posters on classroom walls. There are many ways to use Canva in classrooms. Some teachers decorate their classrooms with posters and use posters as a way to build an engaging learning environment. Canva provides opportunities for teacher to design their new posters with content they want to show in classrooms. Moreover, it is indicated in a study that using visual content as a teaching method stimulates thinking and improves learning environment in a classroom (Shabiralyani, 2015).

With the application of some learning principles, posters can be more effective for teaching and learning.

The most important thing to look at when creating a poster is the Coherence Principle. I used this principle for my poster and I confirmed the image and information I used are necessary to help with comprehension. There is no extraneous, distracting information on my poster. I also used the Signalling Principle for my poster. I bolded words that viewers should pay most attention about for each content. I make sure that leaners will have a clear idea about the significant information on the poster.

Reference:

Shabiralyani, G., Shahzad Hasan, K., Hamad, N., & Iqbal, N. (2015). Impact of Visual Aids in Enhancing the Learning Process Case Research. Journal of Education and Practice, 6, 226-234.

From the readings I learned this week, a popular tool that is used by most of the teachers as a teaching technology, PowerPoint, is being reviewed. The PowerPoint slides are commonly used by people who are doing a presentation. However, as mentioned in the readings, some people sabotage their PowerPoint presentation by falling into a simple and obvious trap that negates the whole concept of dual-coding. This is where everything goes wrong, which make the PowerPoint presentation useless. One obvious mistake of a PowerPoint presentation is that people read off their slides. Read the PowerPoint slides is just something that put audience in very uncomfortable situation. Audience have the ability to understand and get the information they need out of your presentation. Our job is not to codify that for them — we are not their note-taker. Instead, our job is to present that information in a way that lets them anchor it in their mind and process the parts they need. We can do this by “dual-coding”.

1. Use an image to get their attention. Image is a powerful way to get audience attention. Even something that’s not related to the material you are presenting, such as a picture of a cute kitten, your slide will leave a good impression for the audience.
2. Tell an effective story. Instead of telling a big story, tell the story of that slide. The story can be true or it can be metaphorical. We can stand up there with confidence and tell a story to the audience about themselves.

Reference:

Alexander, K. (2017). Dual Coding Theory [Mp3]. https://soundcloud.com/user-433569679/dual-coding-theory

I hope to learn some useful tools and methods that will help with educating, mentoring people. I think education can be in many formats, and the trend now is slowly moving toward multimedia learning because of the development of technology and the pandemic. At this special period, multimedia learning will be more widespread worldwide. I’m currently major in psychology, however, I think psychology and education are closely related. I also have lots of experience working in different classes as a teacher or a teacher assistant. This course can definitely help with my future by expanding my knowledge of multimedia and digital interactive learning. I’m looking forward to learn how technologies can facilitate the diverse learning strategies and how technologies will make teaching more efficient.

The previous learning technologies which I think have made positive impact on me is the Youtube. One of my courses that I took last year is called Phil 301. I found the lecture and the textbook a little hard for me to comprehend and I was struggling with my assignments. However, I went on Youtube and searched for the content I was looking for (I didn’t know why but I’m glad I did that). There were so many videos I can use for learning the course content. The publishers of the videos illustrate the concept in such an easy, relaxing way. This is probably why this course, EDCI 337 will be amazing because multimedia learning is indeed powerful and efficient in some cases.