Hello, everyone. My A1 project is an analysis of the role of social media in modern politics and how mobile technologies can support the political education of students. It was, in part, inspired by Mel’s A1 on Mobile Activism, and by the 2020 presidential election.
I decided to present my A1 in a downloadable PDF format to allow for both online and offline viewing and to avoid some potential viewing issues due to differences between program versions and web browsers. I used Keynote and Canva to create two different versions of this informational pamphlet as I wanted to challenge myself to use technologies I hadn’t tried before. I wanted to use Canva to see if I could produce a compressed version to reduce document size and download time while preserving the information and visuals presented. Thus, I have a more traditional PDF ebook of my Keynote presentation and a more condensed poster/pamphlet version from Canva. Both are designed to cater to mobile use and can be easily zoomed into and scrolled through.
I used my friends and family as guinea pigs and I received mixed results on which version is preferred. I would love to hear your feedback about the content and presentation of my A1 project. I hope you enjoy!
References are found at the end of both PDFs, and images are courtesy of Unsplash.
Hi Dana!
Both formats are visually beautiful, though I did prefer the Keynote simply because the text was chunked smaller. Social media has decreased my emotional stamina when faced with a large piece of text, unfortunately.
I really like the personal piece at the end where you highlight the deficiencies of our K-12 education program. Part of the reason why we don’t learn politics at a young age, I think, is because children lack an interest in it. I remember thinking watching the news was the most boring thing ever when my parents watched it. This is not an excuse for excluding political content, I just think we need to scaffold carefully. I do suppose that is why schools run Student Council elections starting from a very young age?
Ying,
Thank you for the feedback! Yes, the Keynote seems to be the crowd (and my) favourite.
Yes, I remember thinking that too. I also remember think along the lines of “why does this even matter when I can’t vote yet for another 10 years?” That is why I think including critical thinking and evaluation within an educational scaffold at younger ages in critical. It provides them more years of experience applying these skills that are so vital to their future in ways they are not yet aware of. For example, I don’t know about your experience with student council elections, but in my experience they were very much just a popularity context with no backbone. Promising longer recess doesn’t mean much if there is not actual pathway to take to make that happen. If teachers and classes required student council nominees to do a presentation and required classmates to critically evaluate their platform and claims, and justify their election choice, that could be a great way to encourage informed voting in the future. Those skills could then be applied to claims made by presidential nominees and candidates, and their social media posts. What do you think?
Hi Dana,
I like your question about comparing formats! I find that I am learning as much about presentation tools as I am about mobile tools in this assignment.
Your Keynote version was much easier to peruse in my phone than the Canva version. It reminds me a lot of Microsoft Sway, in that the information is presented as chunks rather than as a book.
Your analysis of social media in education was very well aligned with the current issues that are affecting the global online community. In terms of digital consumer health, I wonder if the challenge of fact checking social media posts would be more engaging than fact checking sites. This could be especially true if you give your students a free choice of social media platform for their fact checking project, as the rights of checking would span all platforms.
Thank you for bringing this to our attention!
Evelyne,
Thank you for the feedback! I agree that the keynote was more easily perused. The feedback I received from friends and family who viewed my project agreed that the Keynote was easier to view, but took longer since there were so many slides. The younger family members tended to enjoy the Canva better as it was “shorter” while my older family members enjoyed the ease and clarity of the Keynote presentation. I will have to look into Microsoft Sway!
I agree that challenging students to do the fact-checking themselves and provide evaluations of their sources would be more engaging than just visiting a fact-checking site. Especially when one considers the validity of a fact-checking site. By nature they should be neutral and attempt to minimize bias, but without someone carefully evaluating the social media posts themselves or fact-checking sites, we perhaps shouldn’t really rely on them. I was really excited by the potential of using social media to teach students skills they have already been told are important to various aspects of academia but that they haven’t formed a personal connection with.
Thanks again for your feedback, it is greatly appreciated!