Week 3 Reflection: Interactive Videos
Hi Friends,
Today we are talking about creating H5P content to use as interactive learning videos in the classroom. I can be a borderline luddite when it comes to learning and implementing new software so today’s topic was a bit of a challenge. That being said, I do appreciate how various forms of multimedia can aid our students’ learning.
I’m not much of a video editor or content creator in general; I prefer to use the work of other people (with permission of course) who are much more skilled than me. Maybe that makes me lazy but mostly I just get extremely frustrated when something doesn’t work and requires troubleshooting. The short video I created was made through Zoom and then modified using the H5P plugin software on WordPress. To be honest, it was much easier than I anticipated so maybe I just need to come in with a more positive attitude when creating more content.
Are H5P tools useful in biology? Absolutely. Will I be making any of my own? TBD. Off the top of my head I could potentially create interactive anatomical images where students are asked questions and then have to click on the correct organ/tissue/etc embedded in the image. A text box would pop up and explain what they are looking at and whether they were right or wrong. I dunno, I’m just spitballing here.
Perhaps one of the most useful tools would be simply creating instructional videos for assignments that students could rewatch when they need to, rather than having to read instructional text. I could see this being very useful for things like using excel spreadsheets for science labs. I watched a friend of mine teach 3 back to back grade 12 bio classes where he explained step-by-step how to use Excel formulas to organize and manipulate the data that they created in a previous class. Most of the kids had no idea how to use Excel and many of them struggled with even simple tasks.
At the very least, I now know how to record, share, and modify Zoom videos! Level up!
Brad
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