This week’s class was focused on the use of H5P to add interactive elements to videos. I think this tool could be useful in secondary school settings, depending on the class and the accessibility of technology at the particular school. As an aspiring science teacher, I could see myself using this style of interactive videos to support lab work, especially if I am working at a school without a lab tech or with a lower-level lab setup. The video I created shows how to create a logo for a WordPress website in Canva, which evidently does not apply to science, but I can imagine myself using this tool nonetheless.
While creating and editing videos are more commonly associated with projects for classes like social studies and English, I think there are certainly ways to incorporate this modality into science classes. I think it would be interesting to allow students to create informative videos or sketches of scientific processes or investigations. One idea that comes to mind is to have students create a Myth-Busters style video, where they come up with a hypothesis and film themselves confirming or denying it. Not only would this be fun and valuable for students while creating them, but it would be an engaging way for them to present their findings to their classmates. Another idea I had was for students to create videos explaining things like Newton’s laws, where they could include real-life sports clips or create their own clips. This style of multimodal assignment can be a great tool to engage students who may otherwise be disinterested in science, particularly for lower grade levels like grades 9 and 10, who are all required to take science class for graduation. One concern I have about this, as I mentioned before, is that not all schools have equal access to technology, and this kind of assignment may not be feasible. Students would need devices to film on as well as a decide, most likely a computer or laptop, to edit the footage on.
We have discussed the dual-coding theory in psychology and it’s a theory I have been employing in my studying for years. When preparing for a test, I will often write out all my study notes, either while watching the lecture videos (if available), or I will read them out loud and attempt to teach myself the material while looking at the slides or my own notes. It is my best attempt at engaging in both audio and visual stimuli to better understand the material. I would say this method is typically quite successful for me, and I plan to incorporate this multi-media learning into my teaching practice.