Posts By brilamb
Designing a rich multimedia lesson
Our group built a short lesson on reading a weather map, aimed at Grade 6. It combines a narrated animation, an interactive drag-and-drop, and a two-question check for understanding.
The hardest decision was what to cut. Our first plan had five activities and would have run forty minutes; the version we submitted has three and takes twelve. Everything we removed was interesting. None of it was necessary.
What worked
- Splitting the narration and the on-screen text so they were not saying the same thing.
- Letting learners try the drag-and-drop before we explained it.
- Testing with two people outside the group — both got stuck in the same place, which told us exactly what to fix.
Sample post — replace with your own writing.
Making a two-minute explainer video
For this assignment I made a two-minute explainer on how spaced practice works. In the finished version of this post the video would be embedded here.
Three things I did not expect. First, the script took four times longer than the filming. Second, bad audio makes a video unwatchable in a way that bad video does not — people forgive a shaky picture and do not forgive hiss. Third, captions are not an afterthought: writing them forced me to cut a whole section that made no sense once I saw it written down.
If I made it again
I would storyboard on paper first. Sample post — replace with your own writing, and embed your own video.
Module 1: what multimedia learning actually claims
The claim that stopped me this week was the redundancy principle: that reading text aloud while the same text is on screen makes learning worse, not better. It is counter-intuitive. Every set of slides I have ever sat through does exactly that.
The explanation is that the visual and auditory channels each have limited capacity, and identical text in both spends that capacity twice for no gain. What convinced me was trying it: I recorded the same ninety-second explanation twice, once reading my slides and once with the slides reduced to a single diagram. The second version is shorter, and I can follow it without effort.
What I would change
Next time I will draft the narration first and let the visuals follow, rather than writing slides and then reading them. Sample post — replace with your own writing.
Welcome and Introduction
Before proceeding with your first blog post, take a moment to consider your privacy preferences. Please think about the following:
- Do you want to be online or offline?
- Do you want to use your name (or part of it) or a pseudonym — for example, West Coast Teacher?
- Do you want your blog public or private? You can set individual posts to private or password-protected, or set the whole blog to private.
- Have you considered whether you are posting from within or outside Canada? This blog is hosted in Canada. That said, any public post can be aggregated or curated onto social networks outside Canada.
To help you build a digital presence and establish yourself in the field, we recommend a public website under your full name. That approach fits the principles of open education and gives you control over your professional narrative — but we completely understand if you are not comfortable sharing publicly, for any number of valid reasons.
First tasks
- Open the admin panel by adding /wp-admin to the end of your blog’s address.
- Read the How-tos page — it covers what people ask about most.
- Change the site title and tagline under Settings → General, and replace the name and photo on the front page.
- Add categories or tags to organise your posts, under Posts. Do not remove the pre-existing course categories — they are how your posts reach the course website.
- Check that your posts are appearing on the course website. You must have a course category assigned to the post, and your instructor must have your blog address.
- Add or edit pages, and embed images, video and audio — your own work where possible, or openly licensed material.
- Under Appearance, customise the menu and the site’s colours to your taste.
- Delete this starter post, or switch it to draft if you want to keep it for reference.
Do consider creating a category for each course you take, if you would like to document your learning — including professional learning outside formal courses. Use the course topic rather than the course number where you can: people outside your programme will recognise “Multimedia Learning” but not “EDCI 337”.
Lastly, be aware of FIPPA as it relates to privacy. Share only those names and images you have consent to use, or that are otherwise public. Cloud-based tools are not required to complete this course; if you would like to use one, talk to your instructor first. The course site collects the details under FIPPA, Privacy, and Consent Resources. When in doubt, ask.