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Katie Gallagher: All right. Thank you for joining us today for the session of the K12
Blackboard Innovative Teaching Series. The K12 BITS program is a new training initiative
to help augment your internal training effort. Harnessing our community as K12 Blackboard
school, this will share top strategies and pedagogy for both increasing teacher efficiency
and improving learning outcomes. K12 BITS is free is easy to participate and available
to us, teachers, academic leaders, and Blackboard Learn administrator.
My name is Katie Gallagher. I'm the Senior Product Marketing Manager for Blackboard LMS
solution. And I'll serve as the moderator for the K12 Blackboard Innovative Teaching
Series. I'm always open to new ideas or topics for this series. And please let me know if
you're interested in presenting in the future session. Just e-mail me at katie.gallagher@blackboard.com
with any ideas or suggestions.
I want to introduce to (Janine Richardson) and Colleen Smith today as well. Thanks to
both. (Janine) is Product expert and Colleen is from K12 marketing team. They'll be helping
me to answer questions today in the chat. And we will be joining you for the K12 Blackboard
Innovative Teaching Series this whole spring. So thank you everyone.
I wanted to let everyone know that each Webinar in this series will be recorded. You can search
for the Blackboard Innovative Teaching Series playlist on the YouTube channel or the K12-specific
playlist. And I've got the addresses to both of those on this slide.
You'll each be receiving a recording of this presentation and the slide a few days after
each Webinar by e-mail. In addition, you'll receive an invitation to participate in online
professional learning community on course sites designed to augment this series and
create an avenue for ongoing collaboration and dialog amongst our K12 schools. Please
accept the invitation and participate in the new online PLC.
All Blackboard Innovative Teaching Series Webinars are free and open to all. When you
go to the site, at blackboard.com/bits, look for the K12 icon here to identify the special
sessions. But you're welcome to attend any session within any of the four BITS track.
Our next K12 BITS section, following today, will be blended learning disrupting the factory
model. And it will be held next Monday, March 31st, at 3:30 Eastern standard time. And it
will be led by (Angelie Cobbler), (Diana Bailey), and (Danira Flores) from Florence Public School
in Kansas.
Today we're very pleased to have Deanna Mayers and Christine Davis from Blendedschools.net
to explore interactive online lectures. We all hate sitting through boring slide shows
and (elemental) lectures. But as teachers we know that students learn best through active
involvement. We also know that online learners thrive and they get immediate feedback in
their activity.
Find out why they at Blendedschools.net are beginning to take lesson presentations to
the next level by using opportunities for the students to actively participate. This
interactive lecture will follow research-based practices from Habits of Mind by Art Costa
and Bena Kallick and the Marzano Research Laboratory Instructional Strategy.
Deanna Mayers has worked in K12 education for 21 years as a teacher in Instructional
Code Technology Integrator and Director of Technology, and the last five years of Blendedschools.net,
as a Director of Curriculum. As Director of Curriculum at Blended Schools, Deanna oversees
the management training of practicing teachers to create over 190 online courses, but also
providing curriculum-related professional development to the member district.
Under Deanna's direction where Blendedschools.net has been honored with the International Exemplary
course award. Deanna has a Bachelor of Science in Elementary Education, a Masters degree
in Education and Instructional Systems Design, and Certificate from (Jacksonville) University
and Educational Administration in Penn State Instruction Technology.
Christine Davis is an Instructional Support Coordinator for the Blended Schools Network.
Christine has worked for Blendedschools.net for five years providing professional development
and support for K12 teachers. Prior to joining the Blended Schools Net team, Chris taught
art and digital media for 12 years. She was a recipient of the 2012 Blackboard Catalyst
Award for an Exemplary Course titled Teaching Online.
So welcome to both Deanna and Christine.
Deanna Mayers: Hi, everyone.
Katie Gallagher: Hi. And Deanna, can we pass the controls to you right now in the session?
Deanna Mayers: We can give it a shot.
Katie Gallagher: Great. Great. Here we go.
Deanna Mayers: OK.
Katie Gallagher: Let me able to advance the slide. And I'm going to mute myself for now.
Thank you, Deanna.
Deanna Mayers: You're welcome.
Thank you Katie for the great introductions for both of us. We're really not as pretentious
as our biographies might make a scene. We're just two ladies that love working with teachers
that are out there in the workforce to create engaging online learning opportunities for
kids.
But today's conversation is going to be specifically about how we equip students with the new knowledge
or content or skills that we would typically do in a face-to-face lecture or reading in
a textbook in a more traditional educational setting.
So through our online course development work, we've come through some decisions on how to
create this lecture per se. You know and sometimes lectures are seen as this evil thing. And
there really not is done correctly.
So we'll take you through some things that we learned along the way and we're certainly
up for listening to anything you want to share with us because we're going to -- we're continuing
to learn to how make this better even the next time we work with teachers to create
these lectures.
So I'll take you through some of the theory that Chris and I have used with our teachers.
First, I want to start with the idea that maybe you want to -- and of course, someone
is going to call me while I'm on this Webinar -- sorry, if you hear the beeping. During
this presentation, I would suggest that you -- like we do to our teacher, our students
who are viewing any other video-recorded lectures or what not, that you grab a piece of paper
and you make some notes as you're listening to the presentation.
And this is just one of my favorites, with -- where you just simply make three columns
beside the -- write down any questions you have as we go through. And then think marks,
sometimes you want to think about that question each time it pops up in your mind, and then
summarizing what we're talking about as we go through, just as a suggestion, to try to
model what we would model with our lectures.
So what do we know? We know that students are best reactive involvement. And we also
know that our learners thrive when they get immediate feedback. So we tried to build this
into the way we design lectures.
We used basically this simple -- what am I looking for -- CODE -- what's that called?
Someone help me out -- acronym. Thank you. Simple acronym that stands for connect, organize,
(do code), and exercise or elaborate. And we'll go into each one of these as to what
those words really mean.
So the first one is a connection. So when you're designing your lecture, we want to
first come up with what was maybe your hook to get kids to start to listen to you and
engage with the content right out of the way. It's (inaudible) you know kind of (real men)
and get them thinking. A lot of times in a tool lesson, we'll talk about this as an anticipatory
set or a bell-ringer if you're in the classroom, things like that.
But I also listed here that there's really four different categories that these hooks
fall in, or these getting-started type of activities. And like you'll get this presentation,
so I'm not going to go through each one of them just so that I'm sure we have time for
questions later. But there are different ways to look at it from a mastery standpoint, understanding,
and trying to focus them on something that really makes them think deeply about the content
to get started. And this goes back to the research from Habits in Minds.
So in this connection piece, we always want to make sure that they connect to the background
in any background information they bring into this lecture that you're giving them, of new
content, so that they connect old knowledge with new knowledge. And just some suggestions
here on ways to do that, giving them time to stop and think as you go into lecture and
building that into the script you build for yourself. Or you just your note you're building
for yourself if you don't use a full script when you create an online lecture.
So let's think about this for a second. How do you utilize in your prior knowledge in
a face-to-face lecture? If it worked for you as a teacher in a face-to-face environment,
there is generally a way to trick it to work well for you in the online environment. So
how's (inaudible) and what you already works and build it into this recorded lecture.
One of the things that works well for me, as was in the previous slide, is that controversy.
I'm one of the -- my teaching style is generally, is I post something that's going to get people,
to put them in a little bit of an argumental state. And that works for me. If that works
for you, use that in your online lectures.
So I'm going to pause for just a second to see if anybody -- how many thoughts do you
want to share about how they connect with students, even if it's a virtual connection,
like this recorded lecture style is? How do you connect prior knowledge to the new knowledge
you're bringing out?
I'll just pause a moment for the questions.
Katie Gallagher: Thank you, Deanna. This is Katie again.
For everyone that's on the call, please use the chat. And just make sure it shows sent
to all participants, if you can, to respond back to Deanna.
Deanna Mayers: Thanks Katie for the heads up there.
All right. So let's move on. I'm not seeing anything in chat. I'm not sure if I'm -- should
we Katie or not?
Katie Gallagher: No, I'm not seeing anything yet either.
Deanna Mayers: OK. All right. So we'll move on.
So the second part of that acronym is the organization or the chunking of information
in manageable bytes for students. The way we work with teachers on this, and the easiest
way for them to put some concrete (greasing) behind this structure is that for them to
build a visual organizer as they build your lecture.
So basically, choose a graphic organizer that meets your lecture needs as a type of content
or skill that you're trying to introduce to your students, or not trying you are. And
use that organizer to organize yourself and chunk out the information and then provide
either a skeleton of that organizer or some derivative of it to students as they go through
the video and lecture. So they're engaging, at least in an independent manner right away
with the content.
And then -- as you'll see in number three here -- I'm not sure if we find the pointer.
I think I have a pointer here. Number three here where, though being times throughout
the lecture where you say stop at an area of record, what you heard, rewind if you need,
something along those lines, and maybe something a little more engaging than what the script
wrote there.
Show a problem, having to stop it, try it, then give them the answer. And then stop and
reflect. And then reflect yourself in a magnetic cognition type of way as a teacher to model
that for your students in the online lectures.
So at the end of the organization piece, think about how you organize any new information
you're given. So as I'm talking to you today, hopefully, I'm giving you something new that
you haven't heard before.
How are you organizing what I'm saying for your own learning style? And then maybe, how
do you use graphic organizers when you teach or when you work with building online courses?
Where do you use some sort of organizing manner for new content versus how it connects with
old content, and maybe things that are just being introduced?
So again, if you have any reflections, please let me know through the chat. And I will pause
and we'll talk through some of these things.
So the next piece is the D in the acronym. And this is the deeper processing. And basically
the rule of thumb here is just using those visuals and physical aids that make it -- you
give them another connection. It's kind of hard to give them a connection when you're
looking online to a case or a smell. But we definitely can use images to drive that deeper
connection.
And one of the things I want to caution you on is to make sure you use images where it's
going to create connections and deeper learning and deeper processing of the information.
Try not to use images just for image's sake. But there's a lot of flexibility when you're
recording a lecture and how many different types of images you can bring in to your lectures.
So use that to your advantage for processing.
And this is just some of the research here that -- most of this is coming from the Habits
in Mind research where the deeper processing, the students store content related to an image
and text. Obviously, it's going to be learned better or deeper than if they only learn it
from the textual stage.
So that's you know basically what we're talking about here, is to add these visual aids. When
you're narrating, you want to make sure that you do have that varied tone in the narration
or try not to narrate.
I even tell my teachers that sometimes they want to write a full script for themselves
and then make it perfect and flawless to the recording. You know what, sometimes if you
have a little ooppss, and a little like, oh, sorry, let's go back and try it again, it
makes you real and it's not so rehearsed that it's very boring and blunt and this how varying
a tone leaves into that.
So some kids have caught up on, because it is a videoed lecture, sometimes people think
it has to be perfect. It doesn't necessarily have to be perfect. If you don't want a lot
of uhms and uhs, and you know stumbling around like I'm doing right now. But you do want
to be real to those students because you are their teacher. They're connecting to your
voice, the visuals, and the text that you're sharing with them.
And I think Chris is saying that she encouraged these people to stand up and use their hands
like they are teaching. And if you can see me talking right now, I am probably -- I know
I'm using my hand.
So back to the (do coding), after you've decided what your objective is for your lecture, make
sure that you know what your plan is to equip the students for this new knowledge and skills.
And then lastly, the fun part, I think, is the exercise piece of that. So we build on
those exercises to reinforce and to check their understanding.
One of the things that we suggest is that at least every one to two minutes for an elementary
lecture, and every two to three minutes for an upper or highschool student, that there
is some sort of questioning. And I come back to these four areas of the type of the hooks
that I talked about, that these are types of questions you want to make sure you vary
along the way through your lecture.
And if you were creating a lecture for my 00 or for Blended Schools, we have a limit
of five minutes for each section of a lecture. And then we want people to take a break and
do an action before they do something again. And those types of things, I think I still
have some screen shots in here -- yes, we do things like, just little interactive games,
drag and drops, labeling activities, sorting activities, pairs activities.
And these all align -- I can have these on the PowerPoint here, they align with the research
strategies that Marzano has proven that there is a great deal of just applying this small
strategies will increase learning by quite a large percentage. And each one is a little
different. But I did cite that research here that you'll have access to.
But we ask that they do some sort of similarity-differences activity and some of homework or practice.
And homework is a tough one because online has a little different view of homework and
what that means. But we can give that homework as a guided practice type of activity, definitely,
non-linguistic representations.
There's a lot of research lately about how today's child or students and even young adult
learners are storing information visually and not in text like you know early research
or like when I was school. So that's something for you to definitely think about, to make
sure that you have non-linguistic activities and representations in there. And then the
organization with we have talked about before and some visual cues in your videos.
And just kind of in nutshell, to recap a little bit is, we're going from these four stages
and making that stronger connection here. And then a clear organization of what the
content is, try to (do code) that, and for deeper processing. And it's visuals, audio,
text, whatever you can do to do as many different avenues there. And we'll definitely build
a stronger memory of the content of the new skill or knowledge you're trying to convey.
And then of our common task here, I'm going to shift and like Chris have the mic. And
she's going to take you through some of the tools that we use for Blended Schools for
our lectures.
Christine Davis: OK. Thanks, Deanna.
So I'm going to share a resource with you. And you're welcome to visit this resource
during this presentation, if you like. But this is a video sharing site that we used
with our course developers. And I'll put the link in the chat area as well. But you can
see at there at the top of the slide, it's the bsntube.blendedschools.net.
And this is a site where when our teachers who are developing courses have created some
lessons presentation, these interactive lectures. Then, they need a way to get them into the
courses. So they do that by uploading them to this BSN Tube which works a lot like YouTube
except that it's all instructional content.
And when they upload their videos to BSN Tube, they then are able to categorize them. And
you can see that BSN Tube has categories based on grade levels, and also based on subject
areas, which makes this lesson presentation easier to find. But then also a teacher can
act or uploading them to the BSN Tube, they can either link to these presentations or
embed them using the sharing button below each video presentation.
So once they've uploaded their videos, they then can embed them into their courses and
they appear directly for students.
Now remember that Deanna mentioned that we have our teacher sort of chunk their lesson
presentation. So maybe in one lesson, they have a series of two or three videos that
are in four or five minute segment. So there may be a series of videos that are uploaded
to BSN Tube and then embed it, and there can be activities that a company or follow these
lesson videos, so the students have that actions to take in between steps or immediately following
the presentation.
So if you want to explore BSN Tube, you're more than welcome to do so. When you get there,
notice that you have the subject areas or the grade level areas to click on the search
for videos that's already been created. And if you find the video you like, you're welcome
to use that in one of your own courses.
The other great thing about BSN Tube is that you can upload your own videos to BSN Tube.
If you need a place to host your videos that you want to share with your students, you
can get an account at the link at the top of BSN Tube. And then once you have an account,
you can return here to log in and continue to upload videos.
Creating an account for BSN Tube is pretty simple. Once you click the Create or Get An
Account link at the top of BSN Tube, you're going to see a form that you fill out to request
your account. And you just fill out this form. It is going to ask for your Blackboard username
because our teachers already have a Blackboard username that we give them.
So if you're sitting on this presentation today and you would like to have a BSN Tube
account, then you can put this (BB) as your Blackboard username and then we'll recognize
you as somebody from this presentation when we process this account request.
And then there's another box on the form where you would fill in with your institution names
so that we know who you are and when you're from, so we understand who is uploading these
videos to our resource.
But you are welcome to add videos to it. And there are thousands of videos already there.
So hopefully you'll find the video that you can utilize in one of your courses there that
you can let a colleague know about and using their courses. But it's a great way to get
snippets of your lectures into your courses and then sort of wrap some activities around
them.
Katie Gallagher: That's great, Christine. I just want to interject really quickly you
know feel free to you know add feedback and questions in the chat or in the Q&A box, wherever
you're more comfortable, throughout the presentation. That's a great resource, Christine. Thank
So I'm just going to kind of pause there for a moment before handing it off to Deanna to
see if there are any questions that you have about BSN Tube. I anticipate that you probably
visit that site and you'll have questions once you do. So definitely let us know if
a question comes up.
When you do have an account at BSN Tube, you will see that when you -- when you're ready
to upload a video, there is an Add New link at the top of the Web site. And then you can
select Media Upload from the list of choices. And once your video is uploaded, below the
video, that's where you'll see your options for sharing the video.
So OK. It looks like questions are not coming in at this point in time. So I'm going to
go ahead and pass it back to Deanna for any -- for any closing that she has. But do let
us know if you have questions about this resource along the way.
Thank you.
Deanna Mayers: OK. I see I have controls.
What I wanted to just remind you that I went through a lot of information and theory in
the beginning because Chris has the fun stuff at the end. But I wanted to show you the references
and Katie, I'm correct that they will get a copy of the PowerPoint?
Katie Gallagher: Yes. We'll make a PDF of the PowerPoint.
Deanna Mayers: Good. I encourage you to take a look at some of the research I cite here
and to maybe even question some decisions or what I have shared. Because you know we
learned from each other and questioning and sharing and growing.
And if you have any feedback as to, have you ever considered this, or this is what we do,
we would love to get that feedback from you. And if you have any questions on things that
we didn't cover, because I really just -- and I don't want anybody to think that this is
the, what a whole lesson -- that I'm recommending is the whole lesson of -- in a course.
In a Blended School lesson, we have nine different components that wrapped together to work to
create a full lesson for students. And this is just one piece of that nine -- there's
nine steps. But I felt like it was a piece that sometimes people overlooked. And you
know -- and sometimes we just start recording a lecture without planning.
And I definitely, through the years, this is where teachers have come back to me and
said, "Deanna, well I'm glad I learned how to put that presentation together. I used
it all the time with my kids now." You know there's been a lot of buzz about the (flip-flash)
or I mean all of that. And it's great but you do have to put some actual work together
prior to sitting down and recording your screen and just starting to talk.
So I really wanted to spend some time. And Katie gave us nice enough to give us the (slur)
about interactive presentation. And this can be -- definitely we are just at the tip of
the iceberg of how things can be more interactive. And one is just looking to grow to make this
-- our presentation more interactive with new technologies that we're exploring.
But again, if you have any questions or any -- there's another page of references there
and tell I like to read research. I'm a bit of a geek like that. Sorry. But if there's
any questions or anything you want to share, please feel free to reach out following the
conference. You will have our contact information, I believe.
And Katie, I do not have anything further after that.
Katie Gallagher: OK. Before we move to some closing comments, are there any questions
from the group? Please post them in chat or Q&A.
While we're waiting for a moment to see about that, Deanna and Christine, I want to thank
you for this wealth of information and lots of great tips and resources for all the participants
to you.
OK. So no questions from (Jason), but thanks for all the great information. Christine has
shared the links to the (soft chat cloud). OK.
OK. What does BSN and BSN Tube mean? A question (out little).
Deanna Mayers: It's another acronym of Blended Schools Network or a network of schools that
begin in Pennsylvania or growing outside of the state of Pennsylvania where we have -- we
work as a network or a community of schools for technology threshold development and curriculum
sharing So that's what -- BSN, we used everywhere but it's Blended Schools Network.
Katie Gallagher: Great.
Deanna Mayers: That didn't has officially changed, Katie. So we are Blended Schools
Network.
Katie Gallagher: Network. OK. I kept interchanging them as I was going through -- but I always
knew it was Blendedshools.net so I apologize for asking the question.
Deanna Mayers: It's OK.
Katie Gallagher: There's another question from Pam. I mean, just what tools are used
for video capture and then the development of the lectures.
Deanna Mayers: Chris, I'd like you to take that one, if you don't mind.
Christine Davis: OK. Sure thing.
There is a tool that we recommend for our developers to use. It's is a Web site called
Screencast-O-Matic, as a screen capture tool. And maybe you want to chat in here Deanna,
you put the link in the chat area there.
Screencast-O-Matic is basically a free resource that's available on the Internet. It allows
you to create a recording of your screen and your voice and do some minor editing. However,
there is paid version of the Screencast-O-Matic and not just remove the Screencast-O-Matic
watermark from the finished product and gives you a little more, a little higher-end editing
than the free version would allow you to do.
The Screencast-O-Matic is really simple for people to use because when you go to that
Web site, there's just a big blue button that says, Start Recording. And so you click it
and you are going. You are recording your screen and then capturing your voice. And
that's the tool we used for making the recordings and in doing some minor edits.
And then of course the BSN Tube is the tool that we used for that and to post your video
to, so that they can then be embedded.
And we utilized -- there is a link in the chat area a few moments ago to sample lesson.
And that is an example of a lesson that would be inserted into our Blackboard courses as
an (LTI) link. But that lesson contains, on the second page, some of the video presentations
like we talked about. But you can see it in the context of a lesson with the activities
and interactions that wrapped around it.
Katie Gallagher: Great. So,
Deanna Mayers: I just wanted to mention that we do use a second tool with -- that's called
Explain Everything through iPad. It's an iPad app. We used a Dropbox to publish the lectures.
It's a really, really inexpensive (inaudible). But it is very, very nice recording software.
It allows you to annotate and talk and many other things.
Katie Gallagher: That's interesting. I think our presenters two weeks ago also mentioned
that Explain Everything.
I had one other -- I had one thing to add to this question, which is also, as a followup
question for Christine and Deanna, another free resource I've used for screen capture
is Jing. And it records the (inaudible) and the paid version is called Camtasia. So it's
out there. So I wanted to ask Christine and Deanna, have you explored it as well? Does
the Screencast-O-Matic provides benefits?
And then the second thing I was going to add, if you're not recording your screen, you could
certain use Video Everywhere within Blackboard learn, which will allow you to capture video
and publish directly. But specific to capturing your screen for lessons, Screencast-O-Matic
sounds great. I didn't know Christine, Deanna, have you tried Jing?
Christine Davis: Yes. We actually began with Jing when we first got started with this.
Screencast-O-Matic is a little bit more flexible as far editing features. That's why we move
towards that.
One thing nice about Jing is they usually have a five-minute capture period. Screencast-O-Matic
does give you a 15 minute capture period which can be problematic because we know that those
students need those shorter chunks of instructions. So we really encourage our teachers to still
fix that five-minute time limit so that they don't make the lectures too long and then
strategically break them into those chunks. But Screencast-O-Matic does seem to have a
few more features that Jing did not have.
Deanna Mayers: Both are good.
Katie Gallagher: Great. Great. So if I understand correctly, the editing feature is -- were
better for Screencast-O-Matic.
Christine Davis: Right.
Katie Gallagher: But you like Jing limited you to five-minute capture than no more. OK.
Christine Davis: Yes, that's nice.
And I still personally use Jing for screen shots you know for -- not necessarily for
videos but for screen shots because you can annotate them and label them so quickly. So
it's a nice illustration too.
Katie Gallagher: Great.
Hey, any other questions before we move on? I think those are very helpful.
OK. Let me -- let me add some closing comments. But we're not excluding additional questions
here. I wanted to thank everyone.
So Colleen, could you pass me controls of the room again, please?
I wanted to thank everyone for attending today. Thank you for participating. I wanted to remind
you that we're always open to new ideas for topics for the K12 series. And you know just
please let me know if you're interested in presenting for a future session or you have
a topic idea to katie.gallagher@blackboard.com.
Just a reminder that each of you will be receiving an e-mail with the recording and the presentation
slide in a form of a PDF a few days -- within few days of the Webinar. In addition, you'll
receive that invitation to participate in the online PLC and core site. And we do encourage
you to accept that invitation and participate. And be sure to join us and bring in your colleagues
for our next K12 BITS sessions, which is next Monday at 3:30 Eastern time on Blended Learning.
So with that, I wanted to thank both Deanna and Christine for a wonderful presentation
and great resources. And I wanted to ask the group if there are any final questions, it
looks like we may wrap just a little early and just a little bit before 4:30 but wanted
to -- you know before we sign off, ask if there were any further questions.
All right. Well, thanks everyone for participating today. And yes, have a great evening. OK.