A while ago I came across the idea of using tube maps to visually present information, connections and represent a ‘journey’. Amongst my favourite tube maps is this fantastic connectives map created by Jamie Clark @jamieclark85
I love how visually appealing this is for students to use and develop their writing skills.
On the back of this I decided to create my own to promote our School’s Sixth Form offer (below). Quite a complicated example, but that was the point. It’s hard to express everything we do, but this goes some way to represent it visually and create a talking point with students and parents. We printed this on the reverse of of Sixth Form open morning programmes and displayed it on screens around the Sixth Form.
I also took this a step further by creating an interactive tube map for students to explore. This involved creating ‘hot spots’ over each station using a brilliant site – Thinglink http://www.thinglink.com
Thinglink allows you to create interactive images that can be embedded anywhere using text, images and video. Now, whenever someone moves their cursor over a station more info is accessible through a small text box that pops up or a short video played within the window. A work in progress, but here’s the initial results.
I made this using a DTP package, but a website you can use to build your own tube map is http://www.beno.org.uk/metromapcreator/
Please share any examples of tube maps for learning or your own examples of ‘Thinglinks’.
I recently came across http://www.edpuzzle.com when planning a cover lesson.
EDpuzzle is a website that allows teachers to create tutorials, assignments and projects easily by importing and editing video. The inherent problem with using videos for teaching or flipping the lesson, is that, unless we have made the videos ourselves, the content doesn’t always meet our needs. Perhaps additional concepts are covered or the explanation or example doesn’t quite suit the specification or class we intend to use it with. Edpuzzle has a number of features that help us get around some of these problems.
To start, EDpuzzle allows you to search for and pull content from various sources, such as YouTube, TED, or upload content yourself. The first handy tool is the crop function. No longer do you need to specify a time frame to watch, just trim down the unnecessary content.
Perhaps the two most useful tools of the website are audio track and audio notes. An Audio Track acts as a voiceover recording. I’ve found this particularly useful when I have needed to replace video audio with my own explanation or instruction. For example, when interpreting the images on the screen such as adding my own explanation to a diagram as it is being drawn on the screen or providing a commentary to the visuals.
The Audio Notes add similar functionality, but instead of providing a voiceover, allows you to pause the video and add your own explanation. This is my favourite tool as it allows you to add clarification, prompts and explanation at relevant points. Something you can’t usually do when students watch a video outside of the classroom.
The final function before exporting your video to an assignment, project or a class, is the Quizzes function. This allows teachers to pause the video and add any type of question you like. Multiple choice, short answer, extended written response or simply your own comment (like adding a voice note). The answers submitted by your students when assigned as a class are then collated for you to view on the website. There are also additional settings you can apply that prevent students from skipping any of the features you add to the video. The results of the questions and progress on each video are collated and shown visually on the dashboard. Multiple choice questions are graded automatically and open questions can be marked online with feedback given to each student. The results can even be exported to a CSV file.
I’m still learning, but initial attempts to use this resource have been promising. A great website that is effective and simple to use.