In getting ready for my final presentation for my Certification of Educational Technology and Information Literacy (CoETaIL@YIS) on December 1 at Yohohama International School in Yokohama, Japan, I made the following video to show how I integrated technology into my classes at a redefinition level. I teach yearbook journalism at Christian Academy in Japan, in a high school in Tokyo, Japan and this year I was faced with two challenges from the very beginning. Only ten students wanted to join my yearbook journalism class this year, and nine of those ten were new. My students came into the classroom with little or no knowledge of how to use Adobe InDesign or Photoshop, as well has no knowledge of how to put together a yearbook. The second issue arose that in order to even get 10 students, I would have two separate class periods of yearbook students due to conflicts in schedules. No one could change their class section to have all of them in the room at the same time. How were we going to collaborate and communicate with two different class sessions?
I decided on two different courses of action. One, I would encourage the students to watch video tutorials on how to use the software from home, one hour per night, for one month, 5 days a week using Lynda.com tutorials. Second, I would set up an Edmodo class and ask my students to join the class, so that the two class sections could share thoughts, links, and visual concepts online in a social media platform.
The following video demonstrates technology integration into a high school yearbook journalism class using a flipped classroom learning strategy and social media to promote collaboration and communication. Learning takes place both inside and outside of the classroom in a blended learning environment that promotes anytime at any place learning.
Well this is my final post for my course work for Coetail@YIS. It has been such a great time of learning for me. I have grown so much in my knowledge about technology in education. I was starting to get depressed thinking about how I could keep my head in the game on always learning when a colleague introduced me to Edudemic.com. After going to that site, I realized that I could easily keep learning by downloading their app on my iPad and then subscribe to the Edudemic Magazine for even more articles than what is on the web which downloads directly to the Newsstand on my ipad. A great wealth of information about technology in education. I highly recommend it to those of you who are finishing Coetail with me and what to keep abreast of new technologies.
When I was at Edudemic.com, I found an article on “100 Best Learning Tools of 2012” in which Edmodo was ranked 22 on the list. I wasn’t surprised that it was high on the list. I started using Edmodo in my two high school classes this year for the first time and I have had a lot of success with it in my yearbook journalism class.
At the beginning of the school year, only few students had signed up for the 5th period yearbook. So to make it possible to create a yearbook this year, the registar let me drop my video production’s class sixth period and added another class session for yearbook. The issue then became, how can two separate class periods work together collaboratively on one yearbook? The issue was also that I had only one experienced returning student and nine new students who needed to be trained in using Adobe InDesign and Adobe Photoshop. I usually have about half the class new and half the class with some experience, so the students so I usually pair up students together to help support the newbies with experienced staff members. But with nine out of 10 members being newbies, this really meant it was going to be a slow start in creating the yearbook after training occurred. Problems always come in threes right? Well, our tech guys decided we needed a bigger server and they wanted to move my yearbook files and my digital photography class files to a new volume. However, it has taken them two months to finally do it and I still don’t have digital photography online yet to put photos on. That means even though my staff can start designing layouts, they don’t have access to any of the digital photography students’ photos. I can’t help that problem but the other two problems I tried to solve by using Edmodo and Lynda.com.
I introduced my yearbook students to Edmodo.com so that they could share ideas and visual images with each other using an online social media learning system. It has become a resource bank of ideas for both of the classes to go to for getting them started designing. It has also been a place that I could post assignments, messages, links, and documents that I wanted to share into a digital library right into the Edmodo environment.
I decided to use an iMovie movie trailer to make a commercial about how my yearbook students used Edmodo in my classroom this fall as a part of my presentation of my final project that I will be giving on December 1 at Yokohama International School.
I also signed up my students for a one-month 5 course video tutorials using Lynda.com which allows educators to sign up students for a defined amount of time with limited access to up to 5 courses of the teacher’s choice for only $10 per student per month. This educational option of Lynda.com is called LyndaClassroom. This is what one of my student’s said about LyndaClassroom.
The LyndaClassroom tutorial has helped me a lot in understanding how to use Indesign and Photoshop, and as a beginner, it is really helpful because it summarizes the uses of each software, and how to use it. It is accessible at any time, and any place, so it is much nicer than actually going to school and spending only about 1 hour a day in class. ~Raina
Here is a link to the Google Drive document for my Unit 5 Course Planner based upon Backward by Design for Edmodo and LyndaClassroom.
One day in September I received an email from the Adobe Education Exchange in which I have an RSS feed to and I read the following:
Learn how one teacher is using the “flipped” teaching method to teach Adobe software as a way of utilizing class time to work on projects. This method enables communication between students and teachers during projects and allows everyone in the classroom to contribute.
The topic peaked my interest so I clicked on the link to read the article. After reading the article, it shocked me into saying out loud to myself, “I could have written that.” The article so closely parallelled my teaching experiences that I felt like that I could have written it.
With only ten students in my yearbook journalism class this year, and only one with previous experience, I knew this was going to be a challenging year. Not to mention the two split period classes with seven students in one class and three more in the following period after lunch. I knew I had to be creative in getting the students up and running with everything that they would need to know in as little time as possible. That is when I started looking into the possibility of having my students enroll into Lynda.com. I have been a member of this software video tutorial site for about three years now and I am hooked. I knew that this was the best place to give online video training on the Adobe Creative Suite applications. I need my students to know how to use Adobe InDesign for layouts and also how to edit photos before importing them into the layouts using Adobe Photoshop. Lynda.com has a a LyndaClassroom that allows educators to sign up students for a defined length of time with up to only 5 video tutorial titles for about $10 per month per student.
I wrote up a proposal to give to my high school principal and had titled it “flipped classroom,” but got denied at first because my idea of using an expert didn’t fit the administration’s idea of “flipped classroom.” Some people believe that you have to make your own screen casts in order to it to be called a “flipped classroom,” but I don’t believe that to be the case. I believe it is important to direct your students to the best “experts” and maybe that isn’t you. Yes, I have been using Adobe products for over ten years, but I may not be the best person to teach it. Fortunately after I explained in person my logic behind wanting to enroll my yearbook students in these courses, it got approved for a one month basis. It also got approved for two of my advanced digital photography students who wanted to do an independent study course but had no curriculum to follow. By having them choose five courses from Lynda.com, I enrolled them for four months into these five classes. They now have a specific course guide to help them learn advanced photography and photo editing techniques.
I had wanted my yearbook students to learn the software at home and then use the class time to get started on their layouts. However another obstacle occurred this year when our tech guys decided they wanted to move all of our yearbook and digital photography files to a new server and it has taken them two months to do it. Finally at the end of October the yearbook files got moved, but I am still waiting for the digital photography volume to get moved. Hence the digital photography students haven’t put any of their photos in a place that the yearbook students can get to them yet. So as a result, students have been watching their video tutorials in class more than they have been outside of class. At least I had something that they could do to keep learning how to use the software, while the server finally became available to set up the documents and create folders for the work to finally begin.
It has been a difficult start, but I am very grateful that my students have had this opportunity to be enrolled into Lynda.com. Maybe when they graduate, they may become hooked on them like I am.