EDU 642

Part 1: Reflection on Weekly Readings

Well, as an experienced video editor, teacher of Film Studies, and having experience working in the Los Angeles Film Industry before becoming a teacher, I could probably talk a lot about this topic. It's obviously my passion and my specialty. In short, using video in the classroom is all about engagement in lessons. Think of how much time people spend on platforms like YouTube, TikTok, Instagram TV, SnapChat, etc. All media-rich sites, primarily using video to convey a message or share ideas. Students are more used to engaging with video than reading a text-book and not utilising the power of video to engage a student would be a wasted opportunity. Not only is video useful for students to absorb content and see examples for lessons that couldn't be demonstrated in class (for example huge "elephant toothpaste" reactions, explosions, pollution from a satellite's point of view, whether patterns, etc.), I believe that video is the primary form of communication of information for the 21st century, and educating our students to be competent with using and creating video to be an important life skill for our students.

I was pleasantly surprised to find the section on creativity as I have been doing research on creativity lately for a talk I'm giving later in the month. I was very familiar with the Ken Robinson talk, and mostly disagree with his stance. My sentiment is that creativity comes from knowledge and skills, and that a school's job is to empower students with knowledge and skills, so if the school does a good job of teaching students, the student can use that knowledge and skillset to bring their ideas to life. One bit of interesting research I found was from a neuroscientist Tina Seelig and she was giving a talk and had a great question about the difference between answering these two questions: "5+5 = ?" or "? + ? = 10" with the first question only having one answer, and the second question having an infinite number of answers, which allows for more thought and creativity. So her point was that basically it's not about WHAT we're teaching, but HOW we're teaching. It's easy to see that video can play a big role in the HOW we teach things.

Part 2: Ask

I would love detailed feedback on my design principles stuff. Maybe also examples in class of GOOD vs BAD principles of design? The more examples I see the more confident I'll feel with it I suppose.

Part 3: Provide

1. I don't love having all the course content in that one slides file. I feel like it's clunky and difficult to navigate sometimes. I wouldn't say you need to change it for our cohort but consider for next time.

2. I personally would love a chart with a list of deadlines for all of our projects. Like a pdf or jpeg I can just download on my phone or desktop and personally cross off items once I've completed projects. Blackboard sucks to use to check this type of thing quickly. Is there already something that I am missing?