Tag: layer

Layering for online media

In the first two installments of this series, I attempted to provide a background for the concept of layering suggested tasks on experiences as a way to convert content (or experiences) into learning resources. This post will address just what some of these tasks might be.

To be clear, I have suggested that layering could be a general way to understand what is added to content/experiences to improve the likelihood of learner understanding and application. Even instructional designs such as project and problem-based learning are tasks added on top of content/experiences in order to improve the likelihood of learner understanding and application. My interest is in promoting the more familiar use of layering as has long been applied with traditional paper content and can productively be applied to online content (web pages/web video).

So, let us begin with what I am guessing is familiar. As a college student and perhaps as a professional, many of us used and continue to use some paper textbooks. Often, to improve the processing of this content for immediate understanding and in preparation for later review (studying), many of us added highlighting to this content and perhaps added notes in the margins. We may have noted “key ideas” available at the beginning of the chapter to activate existing knowledge and prioritized our attention to the chapter that followed. We may have used “boxed” recommendations for application embedded within the chapter and used questions at the end of the chapter to check for understanding. All of these additions contributed by the designer or that we added might be considered layered on the basic content in an effort to manipulate the effectiveness and efficiency of our cognitive activity (reading, studying).

If you make use of ebooks, you may continue to use many of these add-ons. You can highlight and annotate. The digitization of this content and the online connection even allows more powerful uses of these tactics. With Kindle books, you can identify the content most commonly highlighted by other readers (a form of group intelligence) and you can search your own additions for a book allowing far more efficient location of your own ideas than would be the case attempting to locate what you had highlighted or annotated in a paper book.

The core idea I am promoting in Layering for Learning is that as a teacher/designer and as a student, tools are available for adding a variety of devices for encouraging effective cognitive activity on top of web pages and web video. These tools are available now. I want to suggest what some of these additions can be. Not all tools offer all of these additions, but all of these additions are available.

• Highlighting
• Annotations (note taking)
• Questions
• Invitations to discuss
• Prompts – suggestions, external links, reminders, added information (images, text, video)

Perhaps you expected a longer list. Recognize that the items on this list are versatile and pretty much allow a teachers/designers to extend existing web content as if they were the original author. Often these tools are available both to the teacher/designer and student and allow information to be passed in both directions. For examples, educators might highlight key points to make certain students recognize these points or have students highlight and see what students see as most important. As was suggested in the second installment of this series, mature learners apply some of these techniques on their own and yet students receive little assistance in learning to take effective notes, to use highlighting effectively, or to generate questions for personal review. The bi-directional shareability of these tools allows expert modeling, peer sharing, and the evaluation of student tool implementation.

Video layering does not allow all of the enhancements mentioned here, but more may be possible than you realize. I will describe video layering in the next post.

I have decided to write a series of posts on the adaptation of online content as learning resources. This is in keeping with K-12 educator in making less use of traditional textbooks and greater use of online content (web pages, video). While I have written textbooks, I have always had some nontraditional views when it comes to learning content and I think my experience with applied educational psychology and instructional design may offer educators some insights. I have written a book on this topic, but I find that each time I write about a topic I develop new ideas so the effort to author a series of blog posts.

This post serves as an introduction to the topic of the difference between online content and online learning resources. It occurs to me that maybe content is not exactly the right word.  Perhaps ‘experience” would be better. Experience is more general and would include activities ranging from what we read and write to what we do with physical materials. Hence approaches such as “making”, problem-based learning and project-based learning are often seen as alternatives to reading, listening and watching. Still, there is a core idea across all learning tasks that something (ideas, concepts, skills) are to be learned and the activities of making, solving problems, or completing projects will result in mastery and retention of certain knowledge and skills. To me, the things to be learned are the content and the other activities are added as a way to create a learning resource.

Perhaps you are not used to thinking like this. I find it useful to differentiate the content/skills to be learned from the activities that are applied to increase the sucess of learning. Such activities can be applied by the learners and eventually learners must get to the point that they are in control and can make decisions regarding what activities should be applied for themselves. In K-12 settings, this independence may be the eventual goal, but educators typically make decisions regarding the activities that are added to content exposure in order to improve understanding, mastery and retention

My theoretical background comes from cognitive psychology which I think is very helpful in understanding what learning is and how ti happens. Any educator needs some core ideas about how learning happens. Part of what I think academics such as me must be able to do is to translate some of the core ideas of cognitive psychology into a form that makes sense to educators. This is what I will try to do here. To keep these posts to a reasonable length, I intend to have a specific focus for each post. The focus here is to list specific cognitive tasks the LEARNER (capitals for emphasis) must accomplish to learn.

Activate existing knowledge. We are certainly capable of pure memorizations, but learning for understanding and application requires that we integrate new ideas into our existing mental structures. I will leave mental structures vague for the moment, but simply put we organize ideas and skills into models or systems. Information/skills are not stored randomly. Perhaps such a structure might be thought of as a “personal theory” of something. A personal theory is how we think something works, a strategy for approaching a certain kind of issue, etc. Knowledge activation simply means we must activate what we already know (our personal theories) when we are learning something new in order to build a better version of these existing theories. Simply put – no activation, no connection, no improvement.

Think. I am a big fan of thinking. Most educators are the same. Content exposure is not enough. As simple as it may sound the learner must think about new ideas. Thinking can take many forms (summarization, imagining applications, etc.), but an important difference between exposure (content, experience) and learning experience is the addition of thinking. Many of the activities educators attempt to add to exposure might be thought of as different ways of encouraging specific forms of thinking.

Evaluate and regulate. I don’t mean testing. I mean any cognitive process frequently fails. This is a good thing. It is good thinking is not overly careful. Being perfect about the thinking leading to learning would be far too time consuming. Think of effective thinking as quick hypotheses with quick evaluation. Fail quick, BUT be able to identify the success of your efforts. Effective readers and effective learners (studiers?) do this. This is one very important distinction between those who struggle and those who do not – the capacity to immediately recognize failure so that minor problems do not become major problems and major problems become discouraging. Quite frankly – those who struggle simply do not know what they do not know. Most of us know in a moment that the last sentence did not make sense (I hope it did, but maybe it did not). If the lack of understanding was obvious to us, we could do something immediately. Even simple rereading drastically increases understanding, but you need to only reread when necessary or things simple become overwhelming and inefficient. Activities can be added to content/experiences to improve evaluation and regulation when learners are unable to execute such cognitive actions themselves.

Three big requirements. Easy enough to state and I hope understand. If you were a successful student and are a successful life-long learner, you do these things with little mental effort, but I hope with some thinking you can recognize them in yourself. The challenge for any educator is to develop these skills in naive and struggling learners.

Newsela is a great classroom resource because it motivates through the use of current issues in the news and it adapts by allowing everyone to read these stories at a level appropriate to their reading ability. Because Newsela offers many layering capabilities (highlighting and notes, questions and prompts), I intended to explore in my Kindle book on layering, I contacted the service and was grant permission to use screen captured images in the book. As I worked out what I would include, I decided to not include Newsela because the service provides both the layering tools and the content. Layering for learning is focused on services students and educators can use to annotate online content and video selected by the users. There are advantages in the approach Newsela takes and the service can probably do more sophisticated things because it provides tools and selects the content. The quantity and variety of content is also impressive.

Newsela provides both a free and a subscription (Pro) model. Annotation is available in both models, BUT the use of annotations in an interactive way between teacher and student is not. If as a teacher you are lucky enough to have access to a Pro account, the opportunity to share annotations with individual students is worth exploration.

Highlighting within Newsela is always enabled. When text is selected, a color palette should appear (Newsela encourages educators and students to use these colors strategically to indicate different things) and so does a “write something” prompt in the margin. I have found with several layering services that highlighting and annotating are potentially linked. I am considering one possibility here – asking each student to comment on a specific remark appearing within the text. The process (teacher to student) would work something like this. Identify and highlight a specific comment appearing within the text and ask a question relevant to this comment. Select the “share” link that should appear with the “write something” textbox. Just to be clear, within the same document, you can either highlight and annotate for personal use or to share with students. This makes sense as personal highlighting and annotating would be helpful in preparing to discuss an article with students.

When the article is assigned for students review, the highlights and comments designated to be shared will appear when the student reads. A text link appearing with the teacher annotations opens a text box allowing students to write a response to the teacher comment. Students do not see the responses generated by peers, but the teacher can view all comments.

The comment and response process can work in the other direction. Students can generate an annotation that the teacher comments on. So, students might be given an assignment requiring annotation and the teacher could provide feedback.

There is one tricky thing educators using this system will need to understand. The highlighting/commenting process must be performed on each “reading level” for a given article. This could be a little tedious, but a system that would allow highlighting of text segments that end up being stated differently for different reading levels would be asking a bit much of the service.