Weekly Reflection Blog Post #2- Jan. 23rd

“Reflections on whether you think including H5P tools would potentially be a useful tool at the grade level you hope to teach (or not).”

• I believe that there is potential for a H5P-type tool in my future classroom but not this exact one. I appreciate many aspects of it for my context as a high school social studies teacher. Aspects like questions and prompts with immediate feedback, mini-quizzies and check-ins throughout videos are all very useful. Combining video, audio and interactive text into one mode is brilliant. A wider range of students can engage easier and give teachers a solid format of formative assessment. With all of this being said, my experience creating the short H5P activity was challenging. The tool is not very user friendly, requires a lot of specific steps, and is formatted in a very dated way. The learning curve may be too steep for a younger class and take too long to set up with many headaches along the way for teachers and students. I also fear that not everyone is going to have the same access to technology or be confident in technology. Maybe there are more modern and polished programs to help this process along more smoothly. The idea is good but until then, these reasons may cause this to be unrealistic in a busy classroom. 

“Describe how you could use video or audio editing as the assignment medium for the subject and grade level you will be teaching (if at all), and what you could do to make the assignment as engaging as possible.”

• Again, social studies is an amazing subject area to present engaging multi-modal projects because of the range in flexibility these days with the curriculum. Inquiry-based assignments that invite students to use creativity in blogs, vlogs, skits, debates, songs, and many more are great doorways into using editing mediums. No matter the topic within socials, video and audio editing can be used on any of these types of assignments. I have already seen classes make parody songs, short-film reenactments, current event blogs, podcast series, and news vlogs. All of these required some sort of technology engagement with audio and/or video. As teachers, this is a great way to make assignments as engaging as possible. If a passion is captured, they won’t mind putting in some extra effort to make their work their own. I would also make sure to keep technical applications open so that students can use what they are comfortable with. I can also provide my own opinions, templates, and examples wherever help is needed. Ultimately, I want to see content engagement and student interest over production quality where lack of support, time, and flexibility get in the way and cause students to lose sight of the learning outcomes.