Liven up the talking head

 

           Personalising lectures delivered through videoconferencing tools

Our masked lives made us realise how our faces were not very important to our identities. Initial days of my masked life, I went around saying, “Hi, I’m Kshema” assuming no one could recognise me behind my mask. I soon realised this wasn’t necessary; I could recognise everyone – masked, gloved, shielded and sometimes even PPEd. This set me thinking about eye contact.  
Real-time eye contact between two people generates shared attention and prepares both brains for social interaction… (Koike et al., 2019 in eNeuro). Source.  
But how do we motivate our students to pay attention when our eye contact is mediated through the camera?
Remember these were students who used to doodle, draw cartoons of the teacher, whisper, pass notes, whoosh paper planes, check phones surreptitiously, share gossip, laugh when the teacher turned to write, day dream, stare at an enemy, gaze at a girlfriend…
And we were teachers who could see them do all these, detect interest, sense boredom, ask questions, wake up someone who was dozing, ask them to walk around a bit, crack a joke, walk around the class, sometimes teach from the back of the classroom, wave at a colleague passing by outside the classroom, etc.
Now, we are reduced to talking heads…and our students sitting ducks.  😅

  An example for a talking head shot. Source. 

A talking head is the head and shoulders shot of a person talking; a news presenter or television reporter who talks to the camera and is viewed in close-up. Mostly used in a not very complimentary manner, a ‘talking head’ means speaking without genuine emotion.
                                

There’s enough written about how to be a good talking head. For instance, take a look at "How to Look Entirely Emotionless"

           This wiki article explains how to stop your eyes and mouth from showing emotions.

I’m going to do the opposite. I’m gong to tell you stuff we can do to enliven the talking head. How do we connect without eye contact? How do we deliver personalised lectures via live conferencing tools?  
And I’m going to practice what I preached in my previous posts, the rest of the article is going to be a 3-minute read.

1. Learn to modulate your voice. Lectures get boring if you drone on using the same pitch and volume throughout. So, practice flexibility, adjust your voice to capture all topics, instructions, feelings, anything.   
Go on, learn from the King.  View the video here.

                                                 A singing lion. King of the raagas 😁
Here’s a more recent inspiration from our own kind - Sai Swetha, a Class 1 teacher on Kerala Victer's channel. Please view the video. It was a huge learning experience for me. 

But whatever species your guide, inspiration or mentor belongs to, the point is learn to use your voice to capture emotions - low, rise, low-rise, high…try the entire gamut to capture all emotions. Practice enthusiasm with voice. Practice energy with your voice. Deliver awesome lectures
2. The second technique is to use drama. I understood its significance when I read about several schools across the world hiring theatre artists and drama coaches to train their teachers. Teachers were all praises because ultimately all teaching is storytelling. So, take a cue. 

                                    Adam Levine in The Voice. Source.
The recent trend of 2020 mood calendar started by Reese Witherspoon is another inspiration to practice dramatic faces. 
We may not be so theatrical, but that’s a start.  Smile, scowl, frown, laugh as if all your students are there. 
3. The third is the camera angle. Take a quick look at your background before you turn the camera on. Many times I noticed that a crooked lampshade or Pretzel (the dog) or Ramakanth (the husband) in the background generates more excitement or discussion than me the teacher. Keep altering your camera angle. Keep altering the talking head shot.

                        Take a cue from another master. Source: A WhatsApp forward. 

 4. The last technique is the use of dialogues. If you want to read out from your notes while lecturing, do so. But don’t make it sound like you’re reading from an essay, make it sound like you’re reading out from a story. Sound like you’re talking to your students.
The teacher whose video I shared above was trending for a long time. Every time I played this video to an audience, they said she sounds like she’s taking a one-on-one class - as if she’s talking to just that child.   
Visualise your students sitting in front of you. Be able to see the world in that tiny grain of camera lens on your computer.   
Students who receive personalised instruction outperform those who do not. Livening up the talking head is one huge step towards personalisation. 

Modifying the text of your lecture to achieve personalisation is discussed in a previous post. 

Go on, be drama champs. 🙌

What is the name of the king in the story? Going beyond tests that measure memory.

                                   Making assessment constructive and meaningful 

This circular from CBSE, May 2020, caught my attention. Finally, as a nation we decided to discuss our favourite, and perhaps only assessment pattern – final exams and term-tests. 

Covid lockdown forced us to confront the drawbacks of an exam-based education system. We realised that unless proctored, monitored, invigilated, these exams make no sense. 

Me invigilating a three hour exam 👀😦😳😵😖👺

Covid compelled us to seek alternate measures to better our testing system. The CBSE circular is a welcome step in that direction; we're now encouraged to implement innovative and alternate modes of assessment in our classes.      

The circular says we need to rethink the present system of an almost complete reliance on prescribed textbooks and exams and replace it with “a combination of an engaging and joyful blend of activity-based learning...to build self-reliance...in our learners"

And we're asked to use textbooks along with technology. Ah! The language of my heart! 💃

Wait, we haven’t finished yet. “Therefore, it is reiterated that in the (current)... context and for the long-term development of ...(our) learners, …schools (should) majorly focus their teaching efforts on learning and its outcomes, rather than entirely on exams, testing and scores.” (page 1) 💃💃

What does this mean for us as teachers? 

When we're asked to focus on outcomes and not on exams, it means the activities meant to be engaging, joyful and for developing self-reliance, can also be considered part of assessment.  

This discourse isn’t new. Many ranging from Kaif on selection of cricketers, the SC on engineering and medical seats, the PMO on allotting of services to candidates selected by the UPSC, have debated the problems of depending on a single assessment as the sole basis for promotion or selection. 

Ranking based on exams that test memory, retention and intellect gives you only a narrow picture of an individual. An individual is so much more than his/her ability to remember facts, understand or reason. And recently, Union Minister for HRD, Ramesh Pokhriyal ‘Nishank’ informed us that policies will soon be formulated to create new curriculums and to make learning more engaging and interactive. 

So, I thought now is a good time to talk about designing engaging and interactive learning activities that can also form alternate modes of assessment.   

Such activities can be delivered pre-lecture, while-lecture or post-lecture. And they can be teacher-assessed, peer- or self-assessed. 

The only thing we need to keep in mind is that they are constructive (serve a purpose beneficial for students) and are meaningful (make sense) to students. This way we won't fall into the trap of designing activities that only mean more marks and nothing else for our students.

When you know the answer but the question is for ten marks. A WhatsApp forward. 

In this post, I hope to introduce you to both analogous (no-screen) tasks and digital tasks. Individual and collaborative tasks. And a mish-mash of all these that can be used to assess students' learning.    

Give me another paragraph just to make us understand the enormity 💣of this paradigm shift. 

As a nation we're convinced of the need to pile more and more content onto/ into (tell me what you think) our students. We're obsessed with huge syllabuses; the more crammed and complicated the syllabus, the safer we feel about our education practices and the security and well-being of our children.  

We believe multiplication tables should be taught in LKG. Source      

And just when we were settling into the habit of straining the minds and bodies of our children with enormous schoolbags and humongous homework, and damaging our vocal cords in the process, GoI announced a 30% reduced syllabus. And more hell broke loose 💥  💥  

So, alternate modes of assessment is a huge step for us. Remember Indiana Jones' leap of faith? 

We're told that exams that lead to grades and ranks may not be the best way to assess our students. We're told we can actually reduce our syllabus and still achieve meaningful learning. And that such activities will help build a more productive learning environment. And that these will make our students active participants who construct personally relevant learning. 

This indeed requires a leap of faith! 😱   

                               It scares us, but have faith. 

Take a look at some sample activities that illustrate all the points listed above.  

A. non-screen activities and projects 

Here’s a list of analogue activities for young learners. 

These activities require  students to move within their house and outside, communicate with people within their families, and do non-digital things like cutting, drawing, singing, reading, clicking pictures, etc. These activities also require planning, organisation, using imagination, etc. Such activities can form the core of your learning and can also be used as part of a larger project.    

Whenever you design an activity, ask yourself: what’s my student doing? What will he/she learn from this? What can he/she demonstrate by doing this?  

Small activities, little tasks and bits of learning put together can form a large project. Projects can make wonderful and comprehensive assessment tools.  

Here are some ideas for projects that you can adapt in your classroom.

And here's a collection of project samples. 

You’ll notice that many of them are non-digital or physical-making projects.

B. technology-based tasks for beginners  

If you’re interested in slowly moving digital, you can try webquests. I love, love, love webquests. Webquests are digital projects and can be used for project-based assessment. 

Webquests promote collaborative, task-based learning. Through various steps, students are given detailed instructions on how to go about doing a task. All the information required for completing the task are presented as online resources/ website links. At the end of the task, students create a tangible output/ a product.

You can choose webquests created by other teachers that are freely available on the web. All you need to do is search for webquests using keywords related to your topic. 

For example, search for Shakespeare webquests and you get this.  

And a search for pollution webquests gets you this. 

Another one that's a proven-favourite of English teachers requires you to design a picture book. View it here.

Here's an all-time hit and my personal favourite that requires students to make a poster presentation after going through a series of cognitively challenging activities. 

You can also create a webquest of your own using online resources. 

Feel like a tech alien? 👽 Some of you'll bless me for this, you can cut technology out and create webquests even on simple word documents that can then be emailed or shared online. (Electronic sharing makes it easier for students to access links.)   

If Webquests sound daunting, try creating a treasure hunt or subject sampler discussed in a previous post. They are simpler starting points. 

Feeling adventurous? 😎Use Trackstar. This can be used by teachers to create a set of websites you want your students to visit. You can annotate each site and design a task based on each website.

C. digital tasks using web 2.0 tools

On the other hand, if your students are tech-savvy and have access to internet-connected devices, go ahead and use web 2.0 tools to design your assessment tasks.   

The following are a few examples. (These are literally the tip of the iceberg since web tools are a million! Okay, that could be an exaggeration, thousands, definitely!)

First is the name of the tool, linked to the website. Each tool is followed by a brief description of what you can do with the tool, and its implications for alternate modes of assessment. But remember there's so much more you can do with each tool. All you need to have is an idea.  

I strongly recommend that you 1. visit the site, 2. search for a few sample tasks created using the tool, 3. listen to a couple of tutorials, and then set down to 4. create a task on your own. (Psst.This is how I learnt and it works. 🙌 )

But then again, if you need help, please feel free to contact me.   

Penzu: Works like a diary. You can ask students to write texts and use images to illustrate the written text. This can be shared with others. 

This allows you to assess students' writing abilities, use of images to support written text, peer feedback, collaborative writing, digital citizenship skills of ethical sharing practices,etc.       

VoiceThread: Students can make multimedia presentations and comment on each other’s presentations. Details in my previous post. You can assess all listed under Penzu, plus use asynchronous discussions to build knowledge and develop respectful and tolerant online communication practices. 

 Piktochart: Students can create posters or infographics. This helps develop the ability to transform a written text to the non-verbal format. 

Here's something that took just ten minutes to create. Source: a teacher's creation during a webinar-workshop.  

Sutori: Draw timelines based on events in a text. This tool also helps develop the ability to transform a chronologically sequenced text to the non-verbal format and provide additional details in the form of multimodal resources for each event on the timeline.  

Google Earth: Conduct a virtual tour of places mentioned in a book they're reading. Or, collect pics of places anywhere in the world and use them to create a scrapbook. Ideal for testing presentation and speaking skills. 

Makebeliefscomix: Students can create comic strips. Can be used to help students teach what they learnt by reproducing text content as comics. Also excellent for promoting creativity and interactivity - imagine the joyous discussion that ensues when students need to decide a character's appearance, colour of clothes, story setting, etc.    

Portfolios: Build self-assessment habits by asking students to create portfolios. Wix is another tool for this. Portfolios promote self-assessment and reflective thinking practices. 

Mindmup: Use for collaborative brainstorming. Can be used to promote students' ability to ideate, form connections among ideas, share ideas with peers, support or challenge other's ideas using valid sources of information, synthesise multiple threads of information, etc.    

Use word clouds or concordancers to analyse a text, identify significant themes, compare text content, etc.  

Thinglink Create interactive images/ maps. This is an excellent tool to create interactive images.  Students can use any image and load it with information by creating hotspots on the image linked to additional multimedia resources. Imagine the writing, comprehension, critical thinking and creativity skills students need to access when asked to embed information in an image. And the alternate modes of summarising abilities required to "pack a lot of content into a small space".    

Phew!

So, you see? This is what I've been telling you. All you need is an idea. There's a tool for everything. 

Everything is techable. (Did I hear my grammar teachers groan? 😨)

So, instead of creating tests that assess memory, retention and recall of facts, try designing meaningful tasks that help with performance-based assessment. 

Testing becomes joyful for both the teacher and the student when you start assessing mindmaps, posters, timelines, multimedia texts, cartoons, narrations, guided tours, group discussions, etc. instead of MCQs, short answers and essays.  

Did I hear you ask, "but how do we evaluate these activities?" 😏

My short answer, "use rubrics" 😄

My threat, "I'll write about that." 😁

My immediate reassurance, "Please search online for rubrics for anything you want to assess."💪 

I mean that. 

There are rubrics posted by other teachers readily available for assessing each activity I mentioned - posters, discussions, multimedia presentations, infographics, mindmaps... everything. 

Using rubrics is like being on the moon - we think it is unfamiliar, strange, difficult, lonely and rare, but many have been there before us. 

Neil Armstrong, Michael Jackson, Nat ('Fly me to the moon')...the moon is a most-frequented spot Image credits  

Search for rubrics produced by other teachers available on the web. Tweak them to match your context and task. This will do for starters. 

Tasks delivered using a combination of tech tools and textbook deliver learning that is engaging and relevant; learning that facilitates the acquisition of 21^st century literacy skills - communication, collaboration, critical thinking and creativity; and assessment that is constructive and meaningful. 

So, go on, enjoy being a test-maker, be a test-breaker. 

Slay it, you don't always have to flip or blend. 💞