I selected the Animoto tool on the recommendation of instructional designer Michelle Pacansky-Brock (https://brocansky.com/) who focuses on humanizing online learning. This is an area of critical importance for me as we prepare for remote teaching in Fall 2020. The experience of emergency remote teaching in Spring 2020 revealed the stresses, inequities and pressures our students encountered in the quick pivot. It is important for us to find as many opportunities for connection and care in our teaching.
The humanizing aspect of Animoto for me is linked to how the
video templates are designed--they have aesthetic appeal to me. The templates
also emphasize brevity.
| As my institution prepares to transition to remote teaching
in the fall (in contrast to our emergency remote attempts in the spring), I
have been engaging in multiple webinars, presentations and forums to learn
about more theories and tools for me and my faculty. These exchanges of ideas
and direct training can be considered a Connectivism approach as proposed by
Pappas (2016) given the networking outcome, discussed later. One event spoke of
the work of instructional designer Michelle Pacansky-Brock who focuses on
humanizing online learning. It was through poking around on her website (https://brocansky.com/) that I found her
recommendation for Animoto. |  |
| The premise for learning Animoto clearly emerged from an
Andragogical drive as the purpose is linked to my own professional development. I consider
my PD as being intrinsic in nature as my drive to learn is to better support my
students. There are also themes of Social Constructivism as the initial appeal
of the Animoto tool was based in its humanizing capacity to engage students.
The humanizing piece is linked to how the video templates are designed (they
have aesthetic appeal to me). The templates also emphasize brevity which
supports the idea of chunking content to prevent Cognitive Overload. |  |
| The biggest “aha” moment for me came from the networking.
The webinars, forums and presentations enlarged my networking and provided
meaningful perspectives on real-world needs and questions. One can apply this
to Connectivism with its emphasis on networked knowledge. An example of this arose with our faculty looking to require that students have
their cameras on for synchronous activities. I knew that this was problematic
as an equity issue (not all students have strong enough bandwidth for this) but
was also concerned about privacy. One of the presenters in a forum I attended
was Karen Costa (http://www.karencostawriter.com/),
an instructional designer who recently wrote “Cameras Be Damned” (https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/cameras-damned-karen-costa).
The LinkedIn article addresses many issues associated with requiring students
to turn on their cameras. I have distributed this to an ad hoc task force
looking at baseline requirements for remote teaching and it will be a featured
resource for all faculty. |  |
Craft. (2020). Animoto. https://craft.co/animoto
Pappas, C. (2016). 5 tips for using connectivism in
elearning. eLearning Industry. https://elearningindustry.com/5-tips-using-connectivism-elearning
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