Presentation+of+Key+Concepts+&+Skills

1. How will you include Mayer’s principle of active processing in your authentic assessment activity? What kind of product will your participants create to demonstrate their learning using multimedia technology?

- The idea of active processing according to Mayer (2009) is that “meaningful learning depends on the learner’s cognitive activity during learning rather than on the learner’s behavioral activity during learning” (p.22). If the learning simply goes through the motion of creating the different multimedia tools that is not the ultimate end result that I am seeking. I am seeking the participants to create and use a twitter account, edublogs, and wikispace for educational purposes. Participants will be taught how to create and use the different technology throughout a semester and then at the end of the semester have a final meeting to evaluate their progress of using the different technology in their actual classrooms. The ultimate way for me as the instructor to evaluate their active learning is to see if the participants have found relevant material from my presentation, organized this material so it makes sense to them and then ultimately integrated this new knowledge with their preexisting knowledge (Mayer, 2009)

2. What kind of multimedia presentation must you create to effectively present key concepts and skills to your participants (video, PowerPoint, podcast, screencast, interactive tutorial, or other)? How will you include Mayer’s principles of dual coding and limited capacity in your presentation?

- Presentation will be through multiple media which will include PowerPoint, video, interactive tutorials along with hands-on activities. There are video tutorials for all three technologies that were produced by each technology. These tutorials can be shown on a larger screen while participants work on their personal computer, but then the tutorials can be referenced later as well for further development if needed.

Mayer’s idea concerning dual coding (2009) will be presented in my multimedia presentation via PowerPoints, videos, interactive tutorials, etc. I will have to make sure the PowerPoints and videos do not have distracting colors, words or anything that would distract the learner from paying attention to the content I wish them to learn. Humans use different channels to process auditory and visual content so as the presenter I must make sure these channels are complementing each other so enhance the learning experience (Mayer, 2009). The idea concerning limited capacity is seen in any learning environment where humans can only process one of these channels at one time (Mayer, 2009). Again, I need to eliminate distractions associated with the different learning channels and also complement the channels. For instance I do not want visual cues on a video to distract the learner from the actual auditory information they will learn.

3. What kind of graphic organizer would be best to give your participants to help facilitate learning in your workshop?

- A graphic organizer will be created that outlines the three technologies the participants will learn how to use throughout this workshop in addition to key questions concerning why these technologies should be utitlized in the classroom.

4. What concepts in your presentation will require pre-training before you begin the workshop? How will you use multimedia to engage your learners during the pre-training phase?

- Participants will answer the questions located on the graphic organizer (see above). In addition to these questions participants will visit each technology's website prior to the first meeting and get a general understanding of what each technology can do. Also key words such as tweet, or post must be understood while visiting these technology's websites.

5. What equipment will you need to conduct your workshop (projector, laptops for each pair of participants, Internet connections, other)?

- I will need a projector, laptop, wireless microphone, wireless internet connection, each participant will need a laptop, and unblock sites so specific videos can be accessed (if this is taking place at a particular school that blocks certain websites).

6. What online applications might you use?

- Online sources that will be used will be twitter, edublogs, wikispaces, webspiration, and YouTube or Howcast..

7. How will your participants collaborate on their projects? How will you group them to create authentic assessment in your workshop?

- Participants will be grouped in 2 or 3 people per learning group. Each person will individually create a twitter account, edublogs, and wikispace for educational purposes, but utilize the people in their learning groups to collaborate on ideas or to ask for help. I will pair these learning groups with those that have strong and weak technology experience. Prior to the workshop starting I will ask each participant to fill out a questionnaire concerning their experience with technology and how they utilize any technology in their classroom. From this questionnaire I will try to pair a strong, mildly strong, and weaker technology savvy persons together. I will also ask learning groups to collaborate with other groups throughout the workshop so new ideas can be generated across learning groups.

