Ancient Egypt Technology
The two learning objects that have been developed are:
1. Shadow Clock (download: Shadow Clock Flash File)
2. The Great Pyramid (download: Great Pyramid Flash File)
Overall Experience of the Course
In this course, I must say I have learnt some very useful skills on developing visual representations that I can use to facilitate my teaching. These include:
- use of concise and simple texts
- careful blending of colours, images, pictures, videos and text to achieve the goals
- use of interactivities
- use of music when necessary
I have also gained some new valuable experiences in this course. These include:
a. The use of blog as part of my study.
This is the very first time that I used blog in my study. I enjoy giving comments to others and receiving comments from others as well. The blog has provided a convenient platform for sharing ideas and opinions. The course has showed me a different dimension of using blog in teaching and learning.
b. The use of Flash.
There are many tools that we can use for developing visuals, such as PowerPoint and Authorware. I’m glad that I’ve the opportunity to learn the use of Flash to develop visual representation. To me, while this software is not a easy to use, I found it very powerful.
I enjoyed participating all the activities, such as looking into the shape of raindrop, discussion of giant squid poster, completing the final assignment in the course. For me, being able to participate, exchange ideas and work collaborately are the best ways of learning.
Thanks to Dr Churchill for preparing us such a rich and enjoyable course! You’ve demonstrated good practices for us on teaching and learning.
Thank you all for your inputs to our prototype. After gathering all your comments, the following improvments have been done on the Great Pyramid which is my part of prototype:
- bigger picture
- bigger texts
- highlight the parts of the pyramid when mouse over.
Here is the modified prototype. Thanks again!
Prototype of Acient Egyptian Technology
There are two learning objects. The followings are the prototype:
1. Shadow Clock (prepared by Oscar)
http://iln.cite.hku.hk/com/1374/users/wklee8/Shadow.swf
2. The Great Pyramid (prepared by Theresa Li)
In this visual, users can learn different parts of the Great Pyramid and how they seal the pyramid by moving the mouse over different parts of the visual. The bottom part of the visual is reserved for displaying information such as texts and pictures. This is a very simple, but hopefully an effective design. Information on other parts of the pyramid will be filled in before completion.
http://iln.cite.hku.hk/com/1374/users/sstli/pyramid_prototype.swf
Your comments are most welcome.
Session 8 has been a productive section as we’re given time to discuss on the project and ask questions. One major decision on our project is, each of us are going to prepare a visual which is going to be a learning object. To provide flexibility for the learning objects to be used in anywhere, there will be no main menu to link up my part of visual and Oscar’s; instead we will post a link for each visual on our blog.
In order that I can post my prototype by next Tuesday, I’m now working very hard on it.
What I already know
I already know the use of the PhotoStory.
What I want to know
Oscar and I are going to handle one part of our visual. How do we bring them together as one final visual in Flash? Besides, each of us is going to develop one option, yet, our project has to be displayed on one screen in one go, how do we go about to do it? Further discussion on the design has to be carried out within the team to find a solution.
What I have learnt
After reflecting on the presentation of our storyboard, I learnt:
- our visual has to be focus
- when designing the visual, it will be more effective if user interactions be built-in rather than just animation.
Final Assignment – Ancient Egypt Technology
Taking into account the comments from Dr. Churchill, we decided to narrow down our project’s options from 4 to 2. Oscar will handle the “Shadow clock” and I will do the “Great Pyramid”. Here is the updated planning of our visual.
As for the Great Pyramid, the users will learn about:
- the different parts inside the Great Pyramid
- how the pyramid was sealed
- how the Egyptian leave the pyramid after sealing
The following is the newly updated storyboard of the Great Pyramid:
What I already know
Photostory is a very simple, but effective tool. I taught Primary 3 students to create digital photo story using the photos taken during their camping with the use of Photostory. The use of pictures, short texts, transitions, different effects and background music really brings fun to children while learning the use of technology to capture their experience at the same time be as creative as they can be to convey their ideas.
What do I want to know
Since we’ve done the storyboard of our assignment, we now have a concrete idea on how to go about to work on it. Really at this stage I need to practice the use of the Flash and try applying the techniques to start working on my project.
What have I learnt
Believe it or not, with the digital story assignment, I found a solution for a problem that I’ve encountered at work. In January, I did a project with the reception children. They planted beans. They learnt about the changes took place in growing and learnt about different parts of the plant. Photos were taken on the plants at different stages. Then, children were being shown with the photos of the plant. They talked about the plant on the photo and they recorded their talking with the computer as well. I put together their sound recording along with the pictures they talked about in a PowerPoint. It was fantastic. Children enjoyed the process and they learnt about the use of technology to capture their experience. However, the Powerpoint size is so huge that it makes it impossible for people to download and watch it on the school website. Now, I’ve a solution to it! While doing my assignment, I realised I can use Photostory and save it as movie file of 320×240 which can greatly reduce a 60MB file down to just around 6MB! What a useful thing to learn!
Photostory – Growing Beans
As explained earlier, this digital photo story is mainly done by our school’s reception children (around 4 to 5 years old). They talked about what they knew about growing plant and different parts of the plant. With this digital photo story, they are able to share their experience and be able to demonstrate their knowlege and understanding on the topic studied as well as their communication and language skill. I hope you all enjoy the fruitful learning outcomes of these children. (Oh! when you click to watch the movie, don’t be surprised that you need to scroll to almost the bottom of the screen before you found the screen showing the ditigal story – technical hiccup!)
http://iln.cite.hku.hk/com/1374/users/sstli/gb320×240.wmv
What I already know
I understand the purpose and the way to create a storyboard.
What do I want to know
I started to learn more about Flash. Since we are working as a team of 2, I want to know how do we go about to merge each other’s work together into one piece.
What have I learnt
I’ve learnt the way to do mouse over in Flash. I found it quite technical, not as easy as I thought! I’m glad that I learnt the planning process to develop an interactive respresentation. This was something that I wanted to learn as mentioned in my reflection in session 3.
Final Assignment (Storyboard)
A storyboard has been developed jointly with Oscar. Although it is rather brief and not all the required pictures are included, it contained the necessary images and description to give others an idea what our work will look like.
What I already know
People will learn better with both concise texts and pictorial presentations.
What do I want to know
Now that we are given time to actually think of the assignment. I really want to know how we can go about to do it with Flash. To me, Flash is more difficult to use than Authorware.
What have I learnt
Thanks to Dr. Churchill who has put so much effort in recording the use of Flash for us. I’ve followed the recording and did some animations. During the lesson we watched each others’ visual representation on raindrop. Fascinating! Some of the works are very well done by the classmates.
Final Assignment
During the lesson, Oscar and I had a talked about the areas which we’re interested to do. We decided to work on the Ancient Egypt, but what exactly are we going to do? During the week, we worked hard to find the topics. We arrived to 5 different topics:
1. Building of the Great Pyramid
2. Ancient Egypt – Famous People
3. How to make a mummy
4. Hieroglphy
5. Ancient Egypt Technology
While all the above are interesting topics, we have, at this stage, decided to work on Ancient Egypt Technology. Please take a look at this document to know why we’ve chosen this topic and the learning objectives.
Personally, I’m very interested in learning everything about ancient Egypt. I think they are the most fascinating civilization. All their craft works, wall paintings and all kinds of artefacts contained rich visual representations showing us all aspects of their lives. To arouse student’s interest in learning it, interactive visual represetations is a desirable choice. I’m more than happy to go for any of the above topics. However, Ancient Egypt Technology might be the best choice among the topics as we can make use of Flash to develop visuals allowing students to experience and explore the technologies that we are planning to do.
What I already know
I’ve learnt about learning objects when I studied “e-Learning Strategies and Management” (MITE 6311). Learning objects are desgined to be accessable, reusable and interoperable. However there are many different definitions of learning objects.
What do I want to know
To create an effective visual, it requires lots of preparations. From drafting out the layout, finding authentic information, searching for appropriate images, sounds, videos, to thinking of the best way to present it and adding of interactives … quite time consuming. I understand that we need to learn from experience, trial and error, but is there a systematic approach to plan and create effective visuals?
What have I learnt
Being able to appreciate each others’ works was very fruitful, as we can learn from each other. I believe it would be more effective if each of us can post our work at least one day before the lesson, so that we can have a chance to look through each other’s work before the session.
I’ve learnt about the learning objects can be classified into information objects, conceptual models, contextual representations, stimulation objects, practice objects and presentation objects (Churchill, 2006). The classification provides a clear direction for us when designing a learning object to achieve the learning goals.
Reflections:
How can visual and interactive material engage student learning in your discipline?
As the ICT teacher of the lower junor year groups, experience told me that interactive visuals, particularly with sound, can be used as a tool to promote self-movitiated learning, arouse children’s interest in learning, keep them focus and concentrate on the task and encourage explorations.
Can you think of a learning object in your own curriculum?
I can think of developing a learning object for learning history, perhaps regarding “Ancent Egypt” or “Ancent Greek” for primary 3 and 4 students, as visuals help the children to understand the facts and arouse their interest in these topics.
Reference:
Churchill, D. (2006). Towards a useful classification of learning objects. Educational Technology Research and Development.
Task – Shape of Raindrops
I worked together with Oscar on this task. We did the research separately and together we exchanged our findings, discussed and decided the texts as well as the overall presentation. Here is our schedule and the draft on the presentation. Finally, we developed the visual on the Shape of Raindrops using PowerPoint. Hope you all enjoy it. Your comments are most welcome.
What do I already know
Images, maps, diagrams, symbols, drawings are all effective visuals. With the empowerment of technology, visuals can become interactive, more vivid, interesting and easier to comprehend.
What do I want to know
I’ve tried using PowerPoint to develop a learning object, but I’ve never tried using Flash to do so. I’m looking forward to learn Flash to create some interactive and animated infographics.
What have I learnt
Reflecting on the use of visuals for communications and the use of languages, I thought of ancient Chinese characters and Egyptian Hieroglyphs. They are symbols or simple drawings and have been evolved to languages being used nowadays. In order to understand a language, we have to spend time learning it. Visuals are more direct; getting to understand the presented meanings is less demanding than learning a language. I reckon westerners would be able to interpret the oracle bone script more than the contemporary Chinese characters. Visuals can break through the language barrier. For instance, the Hadol’s satiric map of Europe in 1870 (shown in this session’s PowerPoint), I found it very enlightening and interesting. If I were to read the underlying meanings in texts, I might be fast asleep. However, in order to fully comprehend the embedded messages of visuals with just images, I reckon one should have imagination, or even an understanding of the context and background of the illustrations.
I enjoyed Task 1 during the lesson. The task gave us an opportunity to share our opinions on the important elements of an effective visual. I learnt that effective visuals need to have:
- appropriate use of colours
- concise writings
- illustrations or images that are inline with the topic
- use of graphics or diagrams to present information
- effective arrangement of text, images, graphs and colours
- careful design taking into account the targeted audience
This is exactly what I want to learn as mentioned in my session 1’s reflection. Perhaps there are some more to be learnt in the coming sessions. Now, Task 2 is going to be a challenge for me to use what I’ve learnt.
Task 2
I’ve done task 2 by myself. It is being done with PowerPoint. When designing the visual, I have taken into account the followings:
- tried to use images for illustration
- different colours have been used to go inline with the theme and facilitate the reading of the texts
- key points are being extracted from the paragraphs and are shown in points form
- interactivity has been built in to allow readers to choose and explore at their will in whatever sequence.
Hope you all enjoy the visual and I’m looking froward to your comments.
