Week Six: Audio/Video Theory and Education

For the reflection this week I decided to include the audio resource I created for our Pedagogy for Science Education course. I wanted to briefly explore what I thought was positive about the resource, and also what I could have improved on to improve the educational experience and motivation. One of my immediate criticisms of this resource, which could also potentially be seen as a benefit depending on the student and the circumstances, is that I present the information in a very calm and mono-tone way. My concern with this is that I believe this may make it less engaging or exciting for certain students who may find the content dry or boring. However, depending on the student, the calm presentation could also allow them to focus more easily, and could also break up the monotony of simply listening to their teacher present information. For example, I could see this being a great resource to use when students are just coming in from recess to help calm their bodies and minds for a more thorough lesson.

That being said, I think one of the areas this resource could be improved tremendously is simply by including video with simple images of what I am discussion, in this case stars. The addition of images with some simple transition effects could give more visually focused learners a better opportunity to stay engaged with the topic. Furthermore, I think that the inclusion of subtitles and close-captioning would help some students who may struggle with audio processing by giving them visual information that they can read and follow along with instead of limiting it to audio.

I think the biggest strength of this resource is the way that I structured the script, and began each section by asking questions to allow students to remain curious about the topic. The introduction of each section starts with me asking a hypothetical question related to stars that a student may ask or be curious about, and then delving further into the topic by answering that question. The purpose of this was to spark some initial curiosity from the student to improve their motivation to stay engaged, and hopefully by asking these questions I am able to promote further curiosity too.

Since our topic for the lesson this week is related to audio/video theory and how it relates to education and how we as educators present information, I wanted to use my reflection to criticize work I have done on this audio resource.