Final Project: Multimedia Presentation of Oral Discussion Rubric

Integration, Synthesis and Metamorphosis

For our final project for course 3, Barb and I decided to use what we had learned about visual literacy to support our student's understanding, retention and recall of the oral discussion skills and language of an effective participant in group discussions in the high school at ISB. The HS ESL Discussion rubric is used by the HS ESL teachers in grades 9-12 to assess students' proficiency and progress in using these target skills and language in their ESL classrooms. Our rationale for choosing to present this rubric to our students in a multimedia format using VoiceThread is discussed in an earlier blog. In this week's blog, I will reflect on the final project and the course overall.

I am satisfied overall with our final project as this was the first time for Barb and I to use VoiceThread and to attempt to present and share a written rubric in a multimedia format. We were not sure going in of the possibilities, limitations, or challenges posed. Yet, we quickly saw the learning and technological possibilities and tried to utilize these to the benefit of our students, and encountered limitations and challenges which we worked together to overcome (both in ways direct and easy and indirect and difficult). We learned a lot on our own and together.

For the final product, I would still have liked to have had a thematic connection to the images outside of their connection to the rubric, perhaps a nature theme or a young adult theme with only photographs (not a mix of drawings or computer graphics and photos). After finishing the project and viewing/hearing the audio feeds and titles, I also now feel it would have been best to simply read the titles (the rubric criteria), which appear briefly across the bottom of the screen, rather than describing the picture and showing how it connects to the main idea for each criterion. I feel the audio feed is too lengthy and takes away from the salience of the pictures and titles. I would rather have this discussion in class with the students—let them discuss the connection of each picture to each rubric criterion. Having the students themselves find the connection will again reinforce their understanding, retention, and recall of the rubric criterion. I feel the VoiceThread stands alone best as a series of minimalist image/title visual reminders of each target skill and language expected of students in an oral discussion. An oral feed that analyzes the connection of the image to the rubric criterion does not do this.

Other possibilities I would like to explore are overlaying the titles on the image itself as they are not noticeable in small font, at the bottom of the screen, as they briefly appear after each image loads. Having made this visual representation of an important class rubric, I am also now interested in having the students create such a multimedia resource themselves with images they choose and with voice threads they prepare where they paraphrase each criterion in their own words.

Some limitations and challenges I still want to work on are becoming more skilled at Internet search engines, whether it's Creative Commons or Google as it takes a long time to find the images or information I am searching for. I feel that with more practice and training must be able to speed up what seems to be an overlong process. Finding images took up the majority of the time Barb and I spent on the project. Embedding video and sharing video of a high visual and auditory quality and manageable size is another area where I need to improve. If we are to create and share such multimedia files with our students they need to be of high quality yet of a size that can be easily downloaded and shared via the Web 2.0 tools used by students and teachers at ISB to communicate and learn.

As for the course overall, I feel this course has given me skill and confidence with a larger tool set of Web 2.0 tools that I can draw upon for the benefit of enhanced student learning in my classes. Since this third course began on September 9th (just seven weeks ago) I now have an account and have posted and shared multiple resources on Google Docs, VoiceThread, SlideShare, and YouTube with my students, colleagues and the larger community of Internet users. (I have also continued to use and explore new uses of our school's Moodle-based course management system, PantherNet) Finally, I leave this third course with an understanding and appreciation of the importance and value of supporting (and where it fits in with my course curricula teaching) visual literacy (along with information and technological literacy) in my ESL and science classes. Big changes in just 7 weeks!

Screencasts in the High School Science and ESL classrooms

As stated in a previous blog (October 13), screencasts have been used in the HS science classes at International School Bangkok (ISB) to guide students through the steps of using Logger Pro on the Physics 9 course CD for about six to seven years now. These screencasts are very effective as they allow students to view the screencast at any time to learn, practice, review and reinforce the proper use of the tools and skills demonstrated. A screencast provides synchronous visual and auditory input with the ability to pause, rewind, and replay as needed.

Screencasts have yet to make their way into the ESL classrooms at ISB, as most of our lessons do not "lend themselves to fixed demonstrations" outside of our use of a fixed set of technological tools such as panthernet (ISB's online course management system), turnitin.com, and course wikis/blogs (7 Things...). However, after reading the article, 7 things you should know about...Screencasting, I would like to try using screencasting to bring together a synchronous and chronological visual and voice-over audio component to online editing of students' papers. In the article it states that teachers can

use screencasts to provide richer feedback on student performance than a marked-up paper offers. A screencast can show students what faculty are marking and let them hear the instructor’s narrative about the reasons behind those marks (7 Things...)

Given the twenty to thirty minutes it takes to edit one student's paper, most editing work takes place outside of the classroom—during office hours or at home. Either way, it is typical for a student not to be present when a teacher is marking his/her paper. For many students, this asynchronous nature of the editing and feedback component of the writing process can be challenging and even problematic and results in fewer learning opportunities, or opportunities to improve as a writer, as the student is a passive recipient of the feedback and often not able to completely and fully understand all the editing remarks and feedback received without the ability to conference with the teacher. Papers are often returned to students online or in person but with no, or limited, conference time. Teacher edits and feedback are provided as abbreviated editing symbols or text, which end up being indecipherable and incomprehensible input for too many students too often.

Having heard enough times that our handwriting is as bad as a doctor's handwriting, many teachers have moved away from handwritten edits and feedback of printed student work and instead request submission of file copies of a student's work that allow 'insert comment' and 'track/highlight changes' options using word processing problems such as Microsoft Word. Comments can be inserted as written text or spoken text. This has helped students make sense of the edits and feedback they receive. However, with increasing numbers of comments and highlighted changes (or hand-written feedback), the paper without a f2f or audio component becomes less manageable and facilitative of student learning from the editing process. The added benefit screencasting adds is the opportunity to see and hear the teacher discuss and explain the edits and feedback in synchronous and chronological order as they are noted. (Refer to my example marked up paper and sample screencast.) One can see that for a paper that receives a substantial amount of edits and feedback, after twenty to thirty minutes on a teacher's desk or computer, the paper has become the proverbial dreaded paper covered in RED ink (or highlights and comment boxes) that every student is horrified and embarrassed to have returned to them.

Red's legacy as the color used in correcting papers and marking mistakes goes back to the 1700s, the era of the quill pen. In those days, red ink was used by clerks and accountants to correct ledgers. From there, it found its way into teachers' hands.
(Aoki, Naomi. "Harshness of red marks has students seeing purple - The Boston Globe." Boston.com. Web. 21 Oct. 2009)

Receiving such a paper (after editing and feedback has been noted by a teacher) is often overwhelming and discouraging to students who see the edits and feedback as errors and mistakes they have made rather than potential learning opportunities. Screencasting again offers an advantage in allowing students to approach the editing process in a personal, step by step, and manageable manner.

My commenting on a paper, on the other hand, is personal, part of my relationship with my students. I mean it to be conversational, and sometimes my students take it that way, and then it's like passing notes in the back row. ("Red marks in the margins: a professor's take on the evolutionary art of grading | csmonitor.com." The Christian Science Monitor | csmonitor.com. Web. 21 Oct. 2009.)

Finally, using screencasting for editing student work allows for richer oral and written narratives, more active involvement of students in the editing (thinking) process, and ultimately the potential to build stronger student-teacher relationships and enhanced student learning.

Food for Thought: Video and Multimedia Presentations in the ESL and Science Classrooms

One of this week's course readings on Video and Video Editing gave me much food for thought. I found the New York Times article, Idea Lab: Becoming Screen Literate, well-written (I'm an online subscriber to the New York Times), thoughtful and thought-provoking, and rich in detail and examples. Combined with last week's reading of The Visual Literacy White Paper, I was left with much to think about in regards to my own teaching practice at International School Bangkok (ISB). Teaching high school ESL and science classrooms at ISB, language literacy and scientific literacy instruction is at the core of my pedagogical practice. I have seen the 'traditional' view of language literacy change in my twenty plus years of teaching English as a Second Language from a focus on a small set of basic skill competencies (RWSL) towards a more contextualized, individualized, yet broader view of language literacy that crosses disciplines (EAP and ESP) and incorporates not just ways of communicating but of thinking, knowing and understanding. Similarly in the sciences, there has been a shift towards a more constructive, interactive, and transferable view of scientific literacy. (See: National Science Education Standards definition of scientific literacy.) Having enrolled in this course, I realize that literacy for students in my ESL and science classes goes even further, cuts across language literacy and scientific literacy, and encompasses a range of other diverse and disparate literacies: information literacy, technological literacy, visual literacy, screen literacy, and ___?___, ___?___ , and ___?___ literacy (fill in the blank with your literacy of choice!). Finding an appropriate and effective place to introduce, instruct, assess, and build on such a range of diverse and disparate literacies seems beyond the scope and sequence of any one of my ESL or science courses! This clearly needs to be thought of in a K-12 curricular context. Food for thought...

A succinct and well-referenced overview of the paradigm shift that has led to our changing definitions of literacy in a range of fields, from more traditional skill-based definitions to more "interactive, constructive, strategic, and meaning-based" definitions is found at the following link, Definitions of Literacy by Julia Scherba de Valenzuela, Ph.D.. I also recommend the book, Science Matters: Achieving Scientific Literacy by Robert M. Hazen and James Trefil for both science and non-science teachers and students. (See Amazon.com link for the book.)

So, back to this week's blog question, "How has the explosion of web based video changed the teaching and learning landscape (in my ESL and science classrooms)?" Since starting my teaching career in the early 1980's, the teaching and learning landscape has changed as much as our definitions of linguistic literacy and scientific literacy. In my and most other ESL and science teachers' classrooms at ISB, video/multimedia has become integral to the teaching and learning landscape. I think this change is a welcome and valued change on the part of most students with the caveat that the inclusion of such multimedia can be done in ways the facilitate and enhance students learning just as easily as they can be included and used in ways that hinder and take away from student learning. As with any tool (and going back to my "food for thought" theme), the proof of the pudding is in the eating. Using a video to show students how to make pudding is not a de facto better pedagogical tool if it does not help students learn how to make (and discuss and reflect on making) a better tasting pudding! Having said this, some of the most effective uses of video/multimedia I have seen in my and others' ESL and science classes at ISB that support our evolving definitions of language and scientific literacies are:

Science Classroom

1. the use of online video to demonstrate various scientific concepts and phenomena (See my earlier blog post of October 5, 2009)
2. the use of screencasting tools to guide students through the use of various tools needed for data analysis in the science classrooms (Logger Pro, WORD Excel, graphpad.com)
   
3. the use of a "website-like CD 'Scientific Writing Guide' for teachers and students to use as a resource in learning to design, conduct, and report on scientific research" (See Jon's blog for more details)
4. the use of online interactive resources (See my earlier blog post of October 5, 2009)
5. the use of PowerPoint presentations embedded with still images, video, and active links to other web-based resources
   

ESL Classrooms

1. the use of a course wiki, and Ning (a social networking site) to develop language literacy (See SlideShare slidecast from TESOL 2009 Convention)
2. the use of a Voice Thread to create and share personal recounts
   
3. the use of an online glossary of words, with accompanying written text, images and voice
4. the use of podcasts and other online video as sources of information for the production of both written and oral text types (See my earlier blog post of October 5, 2009)
5. the use of Google Docs to collaboratively create shared text types
   

What I hope next to see in my and others' ESL and science classes at ISB is an overreaching scope and sequence of curricular outcomes for other relevant literacies such as visual, information and technological literacy incorporated in a K-12 curricular context into each of our ESL and science classes. There is a lot going on in terms of the effective use of video and multimedia in my and others' ESL and science teachers individual classes at ISB; however, these occurrences are not a fixed and articulated component of the class curricula and as such are experiences some but not all students take away from ISB. As a common team curricular document, the curricula for these classes has not been expanded to include outcomes derived from these new visual, information and technological literacies. Further food for thought...

Using Digital Storytelling Tools in the ESL Classsroom

For this week's class, Barb and I decided to work together on using Voice Thread not to create a digital story but to use that same tool to bring an important assessment rubric to life for our HS ESL students at ISB. The High School ESL Oral Discussion Rubric was collaboratively created by the ISB HS ESL team two years ago and is used in all our High School ESL classes, grades 9-12 (albeit in modified form to address the developmental gains and curricular emphases at different grade levels), to assess student performance in group discussions in the ESL classes. Used regularly across grade-level units focused on development of students' oral language for both graded group discussions and Socratic seminars, both ESL and mainstream teachers have (since its inception) noted an overall improvement in oral participation by ESL students in the mainstream classes. For many students, the unit language and skills developed in the ESL classroom appeared to transfer to their mainstream classes. However, for some students the language and skills showed less initial development in the ESL classrooms as well as less transfer to the mainstream classroom. For these students the unit language and skills (as assessed by the rubric) seemed less salient, meaningful, and authentic for students. Given that the skills and language assessed on the rubric are skills and language that all students need to demonstrate in all their high school classes where oral participation is expected and assessed, it was hoped that creating a visual representation of these key skills and language—a video of images and text depicting the key elements (criteria) of the High School ESL Oral Discussion Rubric—would help more students recall and use the skills and language of effective oral participants in their ESL and mainstream classes at ISB.

In creating our Voice Thread video for the HS ESL Oral Discussion Rubric, Barb and I first divided up the task of finding photos to depict the criteria assessed on the rubric. After some discussion, we divided up the language of the rubric criteria into eighteen clearly defined and mostly distinct headers. We had initially thought to have both a 'literal' and 'figurative' image for each criteria, but deciding that simplicity would help make the video and its images more memorable we chose to find and use one photograph with a figurative connection to each criteria. Searching Creative Commons for images that would clearly connect to each criterion in a memorable and meaningful way for our High School ESL students and that were available to us to use as educators indeed proved to be the most challenging part of the whole project. Once we shared images and added them to Voice Thread (which was easy as promised), we then discussed the audio component of the video and decided on using audio to make explicit the connection between the image and the rubric criteria rather than explaining the literal meaning of the criteria as again we wanted to focus on making the images salient and memorable for the students and were confident the students understood the literal meaning of the criteria. We are now working on finishing the audio component of our Voice Thread project and look forward to sharing our finished 'visualized' rubric with both our students and the other HS ESL teachers. The final Voice Thread project will be published on this blog around the first week of November.

To reflect on this project seems premature as it is still in the draft stages; however, learning has no beginning and end points. So in reflecting on my learning to date in terms of the planning, design and delivery of our project using Voice Thread to visualize the HS ESL Discussion Rubric, I would say we would have benefitted from spending more time on the planning stage, specifically:

1. I would initially spend more time discussing and agreeing upon the purpose and vision of the end product held by both group members. Jumping into the task seems efficient in terms of time but actually ends up costing more time if there is no clear and commonly held vision for the project.
2. I would discuss all the images to be sought to depict each criterion as a group; both because they are such a major and integral part of the project, and also because they should show a thematic cohesiveness to be most effective.
3. I would also initially discuss the oral component to ensure the connection between the image and rubric criterion can be succinctly stated.

If we had spent more time on these planning components of the project, I feel our time would have been used more efficiently used and that the final product would have been better and more cohesive as our purpose and vision would have been clearer from the start. Our purpose and vision will still be realized but with some roundabouts and backtracks that could have been avoided with better initial planning and discussion.

Digital storytelling (using Voice thread, Photostory, or iMovie) has also been used in the ESL classrooms at ISB to help students tell their own personal stories in the form of personal recounts (grade 9 EAP class), and could easily be used with many other text types taught in the ESL classes at ISB to enhance student communication as they share and recite their own and others' poetry (Summer School English Language Institute), write and share news stories (grade 10 EAP), biographies (grade 10), and explanation reports (grade 10). Digital storytelling and digital storytelling tools are clearly a useful addition to the tool kit of any language teacher, whether used in a more traditional way to communicate a given text type in a multimedia format or in a more nontraditional way as described to communicate a common assessment tool (again in a multimedia format).

Towards Better Presentations..."My Seven Deadly PowerPoint Sins"

Periodic Table Families Revised 09

View more presentations from Karen Reau.

Periodic Table R08

View more presentations from Karen Reau.

I use PowerPoint in my science classes most days as it is an easy way to organize and share the information I want to cover with students and it provides a record for me and my students of what we discuss each day when reviewing a day's material and at the end of a unit when preparing for tests. I also like PowerPoint as videos, images, url links to information on the web can be contextually embedded in the PowerPoint presentation to enhance the presentation of class content. PowerPoint also allows me to easily revise or add to my presentation based on student misconceptions and depth of understanding on the spot or for subsequent classes. As a language teacher, I like the ability of PowerPoint to support a student's listening comprehension and understanding of a lecture along with student note-taking and deciphering of teacher handwriting and speech decoding. PowerPoint presentations are unfortunately easy to put together quite horribly. Text and images can fill and litter an extensive number of PowerPoint slides in a miniscule number of minutes...to the detriment of student learning and effective teaching. There are many great resources on the web to help presenters create more effective PowerPoint presentations. I especially like these blogs from Presentation Zen blog website:

• What is good PowerPoint design? (talks about the importance of context in determining what is 'appropriate or inappropriate' in terms of creating and presenting a 'great' PowerPoint)
• From design to meaning: a whole new way of presenting? (talks about six fundamental aptitudes relevant for today's 'conceptual age' and presentaions: 'Design, Story, Symphony, Empathy, Play and Meaning')
• Make your next presentation naked (talks about designing and delivering presentations with 'simplicity, clarity, honesty, integrity, and passion')
  

As a teacher, reading the above and other resources I did not so much find myself surprised at any novel ideas found in these articles but rather ashamed that in the interest of time I was using PowerPoints that I knew could be greatly enhanced for more effective student learning and teaching. So as a reminder to myself and a visual record of my promise to find the time to create better PowerPoint presentations for my students, I will list my seven deadly PowerPoint sins...

1. Using PowerPoint as a time saving rather than a creative tool
2. Using PowerPoints that require students to be passive listeners rather than active participants
   
3. Using PowerPoint to relay (lecture on) rather than discuss class content
4. Using PowerPoints in ways with which I am comfortable and familiar
5. Using PowerPoint slides that are loaded with sentence-level text using complex structures and vocabulary
   
6. Using PowerPoint slides that are 'busy' with text, images, links, color
7. Using PowerPoint slides that are impersonal, not show my personality
   

A first step in moving beyond these sins has been the revision of the attached PowerPoint. Periodic Table_r08 is the original class PowerPoint and Periodic Table_Families revised_r09 is the revised class PowerPoint predominately for slides 37-48 of the original PowerPoint. In comparing the two PowerPoints, I hope the following areas are notable and improvements on the original PowerPoint and my seven sins:

1. Time was taken to improve a PowerPoint used in previous years in order to enhance its pedagogical and creative potential
   
2. The images depicting key terms (slides e.g. slide 22), videos (slide 15), interactive web sites (slide 3), and blank slides for student generated text (slide 8) require active participation on the part of the students
3. Active participation as demanded in # 2 above and the elimination of the need to take notes with the provision of a PowerPoint slide handout facilitated class discussion
   
4. Using PowerPoints to facilitate class discussion
   
5. Each slide has less text than the original and color to identity key terms and images depicting key vocabulary
   
6. The slides have more images, color and links but less text (~a trade-off, perhaps)
   
7. The choice of images (slide 31) and cartoons (slide 9 and 24) showed my personal interests and humor
   

In using the revised PowerPoint with my Chemistry 9 students I noticed a greater interest, understanding, and retention of the content through the use of more video clips (especially MythBusters, which the students ask every day if we can watch another video clip from what has now become their favorite Discovery channel show), images, and less text per slide. I also printed the revised PowerPoint for the students as a 3 slide handout so that the students and I could focus on discussing together the content of the presentation rather than having the students' focus taken up with notetaking. Having more video clips, URL links, and images and less text also freed me to engage the students in a more natural discuss versus lecture on the class content. Overall, I found the PowerPoint, revised and presented as describe above, provided the students more time for reflective thought and class discussion while presenting the content with more salient and memorable visual connections. There is much more I can do to improve this and each of the PowerPoints I used in my class so I encourage myself to continue by the words of Scott Reed, "This one step - choosing a goal and sticking to it - changes everything."

Using Visual Imagery to Support Curricular Content

In teaching comparative writing to my English for Academic Purposes (EAP) grade 10 students, one of the aspects of comparative writing that students struggle with is finding a meaningful purpose for comparison (and to a lesser degree choosing subjects to compare that are similar in nature). Finding or brainstorming similarities and differences between two or more subjects is an easy first step for my students, but to find a meaningful purpose for comparison of two or more subjects that is well supported through the selection and description of key similarities and differences (and grouped into aspects) that themselves make the comparison of subjects meaningful and interesting is the challenge.

In using this picture at the start of the unit to help students understand the importance of choosing two or more subjects similar in nature and aspects of comparison with relevant, meaningful and interesting points of comparison, I would guide my students through the following questions:

1. Who is being shown in the picture? How are they likely related? (~subjects)

2. How are these three girls similar? (~points of similarity)

3. How can we group these similarities into labeled categories? (~aspects)

4. How are these three girls different? (~points of difference)

5. How can we group their differences into labeled categories? (~aspects)

6. Which categories overlap for the similarities and differences identified? (~meaningful subjects and aspects)

7. Why might there be a need to know points of comparison (similarities and differences) between these three girls? and by whom? (~meaningful purpose and target audience)

8. Which of these purposes is most meaningful and interesting? for whom? and which aspects and points of comparison are most meaningful, interesting and relevant in support of this purpose of comparison? (~meaningful purpose, aspects, points of comparison)

By starting the unit on comparative writing with the above image and questions, I can begin to address what is the most challenging aspect of the initial stages of the writing process with comparative writing—choosing subjects similar in nature, where there is a real need to describe (compare and contrast) the subjects through the selection of meaningful, relevant, and interesting points of comparison. Such a start to the unit also allows me to introduce key vocabulary early on (See bold words in parentheses after each question above).

The image itself I believe the students will find memorable and interesting and an effective link now and later to the vocabulary and concepts of comparative writing described above for the following reasons:

1. The photo is unusual for today in being a black and white photo and memorable for the old-fashioned attire (clothes, tights and hair pieces) of the girls.
2. The photo is of children, three young girls, a subject to which we are all drawn—have an emotional (evolutionary) connection.
3. Yet there is an emotional disconnect between the joy and innocence of youth and the stark black and white color of the photo and the lack of emotional affect of the body language and facial expressions of the girls overall.
4. Twins are interesting! Thinking about twins addresses issues of personal identity for us all.

Using this photo as outlined thus helps to jump-start the unit in an interesting way that links key concepts and vocabulary to a salient image for enhanced short and long-term memory retention.

To end this blog, I would like to share one of my favorite uses of an image for facilitation of memory retention on how to start a compare and contrast essay, piece of comparative writing. Students are asked to start their writing with the use of (a)...


S Startling, shocking, surprising Statement or Statistics

Q Question or Quote

D Dialogue or Description

F Flashback or Anecdote

L List of images

S Setting: time, place, atmosphere
H Character: physical or personality traits

* Or a mixture of any of the above.

To help students remember the various options for starting their compare and contrast essay I show students the following picture and tell them to remember Squid Flesh, or a fleshy squid!

Reflective Blog Post: How has the program changed my teaching?

Looking back upon the past school year and my enrollment in the ISB Certificate of Educational Technology and Information Literacy Program, I would say the first two courses—course #1: Information Literacy and Ourselves as Learners and course #2: 21st Century Literacy Ideas, Questions, and Issues—of this program have impacted my classroom practice and reflective thinking in a number of ways. The main impact of these two courses has been to raise my awareness of the issues and possibilities and responsibilities inherent in preparing our students with the knowledge, skills and understanding they will need to be literate in the 21st Century. With this increased awareness I have sought in my classroom practice to accept greater responsibility as an educator to provide my students with greater exposure to the possibilities and issues connected to 21st Century literacy while creating opportunities within my class curriculum to build the knowledge, skills and understandings students will need to be literate in the 21st Century. To this end, in my EAP 10 class unit on news writing, a stronger emphasis (more class time) and higher expectation (increased weighting on the unit rubrics) was established for the skills of quoting, paraphrasing, and summarizing and citing sources (inclusive of images and text) using MLA format. This discussion, instruction, and assessment with these skills then carried over throughout other units where the expectation for fair and accurate citing of sources is reinforces. I also am more cognizant of the learner benefits and confident as a teacher in the classroom with the use of various multimedia sources of information and communications. In my class I now use more...

• podcasts (some of my favorites are: CNN Student News, Grammar Girl, and Scientific American's 60-Second Science and 60-Second Psychology podcasts from the iTunes Store),
  
• online sources of videos (some of my favorites are: Nova, The Periodic Table Live from the University of Wisconsin, SciTech Video channel along with other YouTube videos),
  
• online interactive resources (some of my favorites are: The Biology Project of the University of Arizona, DNA from the Beginning, from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, and the Dynamic Periodic Table),
  
• images (I still prefer Google image searches for the images I use in my science and ESL classes over flickr searches as I am better able to find the concrete or 'real' images I need for my science and ESL classes), and
  
• SMART Board files and PowerPoints.

Furthermore I now use a virtual learning environment (via our school's online course management system (CMS), panthernet and turnitin.com) for online discussion forums, course glossaries, and submitting written assignments.

Student interest is clearly captured, and understanding and memory enhanced by the use of images and videos. Furthermore, the effective selection and use of images and videos more easily generates class discussion that is broader and deeper than that generated by text alone. One student in my Foundations Chemistry 9 class asks each day if we can see more of Discovery Channel's MythBusters videos after showing the following video, MythBusters Viewers Special Threequel: Alkaline Metal Explosion Part 2, demonstrating the reaction of Alkali metals and water.

Looking forward to the next three courses of the ISB Certificate of Educational Technology and Information Literacy Program, my goal is to have my students (and myself as well) more equally develop receptive and expressive information technology and visual literacy skills by becoming creators of the multimedia resources that have become more prevalent in our classroom.