This week's assignments again have me cleaning up and simplifying. I have found that the process of simplification is not as easy as it may sound. I think one of the reasons for this is that in education we often think of the more you know the better, so we translate that to the more we teach the better our students will be.
I am still enjoying Zen because it is doing two things for me. The first is giving me some overarching ideas that I can try to always have in mind when creating presentations. The second is that it still has some solid concrete steps to follow. I really enjoyed the rules for going analog and concrete process steps at the end of chapter four. The balance between big picture and small directions is just right for keeping me interested and directed in my work.
I think Voicethread as a program is something that almost forces the author to follow the Zen model in that the pictures are the emphasis, text is off to the side, and you are limited, which forces a focus on a key concept or idea. I also really like how my planning went. I planned out my Civil Right presentation in a notebook, sketching out ideas and pictures that I wanted. I then went and found the exact pictures, rather than scanning the thousands of images for hours. The whole planning, researching, and creating process went much more smoothly and quickly then had I stayed on the computer the whole time. I was really happy with the process.
Final point, I think VoiceThread has great possibilities for my students this year as it is a very easy interface. I also like the idea of having other students see, and comment on each others work. I should be a fun option to give students this fall for possible presentations.
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