Mike's Reading and Thinking Notes - 10/7
Rankins-Robertson, Bourelle, Bourelle, & Fisher’s “Multimodal Instruction”
My first impression, not being that familiar with Kairos, was how cool the layout and formatting of the article was. I think this is the future of publications (although I hope books don't go away entirely). The 'essay' is so easy to navigate, to jump, let's say from the theoretical framework for multimodal assignments to some of the practical assignments that could be used or built off of.
The section on "recommendations for teachers" was particularly helpful, as I will be planning my first "truly" multimodal assignment soon for next semester (an assignment where students integrate various kinds of media through a digital platform). One sub-section was on "keeping it short," and that intersects quite well with Medina's reading from this week about the attention: keep things short and sweet. I'm still nervous about what loss that effects in terms of quality and depth of analysis, but this article shows that it is possible to pull this off well. Making these issues and hazards known to students, I think, is really important to framing the use of this technology in a rhetorical way (it's not just making things shorter for the sake of them being shorter).
Brain Rules Chapter 6
This week's BR reading was on attention. Wait, what was I talking about?
Oh yeah, attention. While the body can multitask, the mind can only pay attention to one thing at a time. It's not to say that we can't do more than one thing at a time, but it comes at a loss (a loss of information, a loss of safety, a loss of quality, whatever the case might be. People who are seemingly good at multitasking are actually really good with their short-term memory and switching from task to task, although that's much more true with tasks that the person is already familiar with (Medina 118).
Medina also goes into the attention span of people today and how people 'need' (forgive my intonational markers here, but I must put them) for breaks, re-focusing, or hooks (as Medina puts it) every ten minutes to redirect attention. I think this is solid advice, which I've heard over and over again coming out of the field of education, although I think it can be taken to the extreme. Medina says he can "burn through five large concepts in a single period" (120), covering one major topic every 10 minutes. My concern has to do with the depth of this kind of learning. How in-depth can one go into a concept in only 10 minutes. The single core concept, Medina says, can be "always explainable in one minute," with his emphasis, not mine (120). I'm convinced that these 'breaks' help, and I do it myself, but not to the extreme that Medina does. Certainly there are concepts and knowledge that cannot be "explained" (another dubious word he uses here) in just one minute. This, to me, is dangerous stuff and should be thought through carefully.
Kevin's Google Presentation on Brain Rules was the first time I've seen a Google presentation before, and I was impressed with its ease of use. Kevin did a great job of integrating information (not too much, which is always a risk) with images throughout the presentation. In the past, I've used Prezi a lot, but for a more 'professional' presentation, this would be a great option. I like that you can download it as a PPT file, too, in case you don't have access to the cloud.
Shantal's Prezi presentation demonstrates the aesthetic benefits of using Prezi over other presentation tools. The movement from circle to circle helps engage an audience used to watching TV/movies where camera angle changes are happening every second or two. I actually just used Prezi for a presentation I gave Friday at the Ohio Association of Two-Year Colleges Conference. This is one of my favorite tools to use.
| Previous page on path | Mike Piero, page 10 of 22 | Next page on path |
Discussion of "Mike's Reading and Thinking Notes - 10/7"
Kairos
I actually think RR's et als, article was one of the easier to read. Be sure to surf Kairos, you'll find some trickier ones.Posted on 29 October 2014, 5:15 am by Shelley Rodrigo | Permalink
Add your voice to this discussion.
Checking your signed in status ...