The Effective Production of Lesson Summaries
As part of my PGCE course, I have investigated how to quickly produce concise lesson summaries designed to be placed on a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) such as Moodle, for purpose of catch-up (for those who have missed a lesson) and revision.
A very brief summary of my academic poster is included here, along with the references
Spider Diagrams, Mind Maps and Concept Maps
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| a simple animated GIF - click to run |
InfoGraphics and Word Clouds
Good InfoGraphics are visually appealing way to convey complex information clearly but can be difficult and time consuming to create if you are not that artistic. Google “[subject] infographic” or try http://www.easel.ly/ to make your own.Word Clouds - paste your text into http://www.wordle.net/create and it will generate a free word cloud for you. Hit the “Randomize” button to try out different views.
Text to Speech (to mp3)
The Mac's “add to iTunes as a spoken track” option records text directly as an audio track which iTunes can then convert into an MP3 for loading onto the VLE. Best for short summaries. I find the voice 'Vicki' the clearest.
Animated GIFs
Animated GIFs are image files which display as short animated sequences. They can be displayed in web pages and text documents, but will not play in PDFs. They are ideal for demonstrating concepts such as wave propagation, motion, 3-D structure and anatomy. Readily available on the internet, but take care you have a licence to use them if you are going to post on a VLE. You can make your own GIFs if you have access to Photoshop (expensive) or GIMP (free) but the learning curve is steep (but worth it!)
examples:
DNA:
Muybridge race horse:
our solar system:
sea level anomalies:
GIMP tutorial:
Practicalities
1 – PDF is a good format as it can be read on any computer, Smart Phone, iPad etc (as long as they have a browser).2 - The summaries are designed for viewing on a computer (via the VLE), not printing out because:
Colour is important
It allows the graphics to be zoomed in on to view the detail
3 - Don't spend too much time on this, recycle resources used in your lessons as much as you can.
Design Principles
Keep it short. Minimise text, maximise graphics. Remember, it’s a summary.Audio: Keep it really short!
Keep it fun – add some cartoons
Make the summary as clean and simple as possible
Consistency of text, font and layout.
References and Further Reading
Spider Diagrams and Mind Maps
Budd J.W. (2004), Mind Maps as Classroom Exercises, Journal of Economic Education - Winter 2004, 35-46
Farrand, P., Hussain, F., & Hennessy, E. (2002), The Efficacy of the Mind Map Study Technique, Medical Education - 2002 36 426-431
InfoGraphics & Word Clouds
An InfoGraphics blog (education section) http://www.coolinfographics.com/blog/tag/education
An InfoGraphics search engine http://infographipedia.com/
Word Cloud Generator http://www.wordle.net/create
Text to Speech and Speech to Text
Peters, T. (2007). Choosing and Using Text-to-Speech Software. Computers In Libraries, 27(2), 26-29.
Nuance software (I’ve not tried it but this is the market leader) http://www.nuance.co.uk/
Voice dictation on iPad3:
Animated GIFs
GIMP image editor http://www.gimp.org
Wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphics_Interchange_Format
Use of animation in the classroom: http://raustria.wordpress.com/2010/09/24/the-use-of-animation-as-a-teaching-and-learning-tool-to-engage-students-interest-in-the-classroom/
Practicalities
Snipping Tool: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snipping_Tool
PDFs can be created in nearly all modern Word Processing software (Word, OpenOffice, LibreOffice, Pages) often under the ‘Export’ option
QR code generation http://www.qrstuff.com/
Design
Dieter Rams “Less is More” http://designmuseum.org/design/dieter-rams
Graphic Design http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphic_design
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