Category Archives: Educational Technology

H5P

Numerous research studies support the foundational multimedia principle that people learn better with images and words, rather than words alone. While the inclusion of any graphics, in general, improves positive feelings about learning experiences it doesn’t necessarily improving learning outcomes. However, evidence supports that students who are exposed to graphics which are relevant to instructional goals do perform and learn better. Consequently, it’s important to consider how graphics function and which types are best aligned to instructional content and goals.

The following H5P interaction provides information about the different categories of graphics and how they function to serve different learning goals.

Adobe Spark Post

Adobe has been busy updating some of their software geared for non-professional online content creators. The Adobe Spark suite includes Adobe Spark Video, Adobe Spark Page, and Adobe Spark Post.

Adobe Spark Post is So Easy to Use! 

With Adobe Spark Post it is unbelievably easy to create social media posts and banners.  The interface is very intuitive. The colour selection is simple. Users can select colour schemes from the existing colour palettes. It’s even easier and faster to create social media content using Adobe Spark Post than it is with Canva. However,  Canva has more options for downloading formats. And as  Canva allows for more flexibly in design and layout as well as formatting options for the text. (See my Canva blog post for details.)

But for quick and easy posts, Adobe Spark Post is better. Here are a couple of samples of a social media posts I created in just a few minutes.
Adobe Spark-3

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When Technologies Collide…

Infographics and ThingLink

I may be dating my self, but do you remember the old Reese peanut butter cup commercial—”You got chocolate in my peanut butter”? Well, if you do remember it, you will know the main premise is a combination of two things can sometimes produce something else that is really, really cool.

The same is true when infographics are used in combination with ThingLink.  Even though vision is our dominant sense, it alone, is often not enough for teaching and learning.By combining the two technologies, you are able to express ideas and key points more effectively. The combination of video (with audio), explanatory text and links to other resources, the learning becomes layered (encouraging scaffolding of instruction) and encourages an organic style of exploration.

If you are not familiar with using Adobe Illustrator, there are a number of online tools available to create infographics easily. Here are a few which are very intuitive to use: Continue reading

Pinterest for Education

PinterestPinterest has been around for quite some time now. And its been used in education in a number of ways. It’s a great way for educators to collect images, and links to websites in an organized accessible manner. The boards can be shared by e-mail, or by sharing the url. Also  Pinterest boards can be embedded into  HTML pages or linked from the Learning Management System. Continue reading

Interactive Timeline

Creating an interactive timeline using TimelineJS 3, is straightforward, yet there is still enough flexibility to customize some formatting, and to add content to the timeline using HTML code.

As indicated on the TimelineJS 3 website, there are only four steps to create the timeline:

  1. Download the timeline google spreadsheet template document provided on theTimelineJS 3 website and follow the instructions to populate it.
  2. Publish the Google spreadsheet.
  3. Paste the published Google spreadsheets url into the Timeline JS generator and select formatting options.
  4. Embed the code into your website, or blog.

Here is a sample of a timeline I created for a project in the ETEC 540: Text Technology: The Changing Spaces of Reading and Writing course.

The drawback with creating interactive timelines using this tool, is that links can be broken as content is removed or moved online. But that is a common issue when referencing online content and resources.