Day: January 9, 2020

virtual classrooms and cognitive load theory

In response to a request for material on virtual classrooms, I stumbled across some interesting theory around cognitive processing and Virtual classrooms by Dr Ruth Clark.

Dr Ruth Clark runs a training and consultancy website. There are lots of courses you can enrol in but they are pretty expensive. The graduate certificate in Applied eLearning does much the same and is a lot cheaper so we are really lucky to have this qual in NZ.

here is a link to an article by ruth clark on harnessing virtual communities. 
It has some good pointers about keeping learners engaged during a standard virtual lecture/session averaging 60 minutes:
1. maintain a lively pace
2. visualize your content
3. incorporate frequent participant responses – you will notice in the audio lecture on cognitive processing she asks lots of questions and uses polling a lot and she also gets participants to do activities during the session.
4. use small group breakout rooms.
it is a short article and worth a look.

My comments on the audio: Personally i think such long lecture sessions are a bit much but I was only listening to the audio and she did have slides – she seems to do a good job of getting input from the class using text only. The participants don\’t seem to feature on the audio so cant have used mics. some interesting stuff about cognitive load and learning styles. e.g. differences between learning styles of different learners are minor in comparison to the ways our brains are set up to process information overall. She talks about the modality principle – best learning is when you have audio to explain visuals.

See also an article I stumbled across about A Learner-Centered Approach to Multimedia Explanations: Deriving Instructional Design Principles from Cognitive Theory. By Moreno, R. & Mayer, R. (2000). This is published online in the Interactive Multimedia Electronic journal of computer-enhanced learning…phew.

The diagram of working memory was informative.illustrates how words and images move from sensory memory to working memory and into long-term memory. Remember working memory can only hold so much information and is easily overloaded.
Dr Ruth Clark also said that cognitive overload can occur if several modalities. For example, the use of visual, text and audio together causes a redundancy effect because we are overloading the visual processing area. using audio and text together is better but use of one modality at a time is best.
Dr ruth does not like people multitasking e.g. checking emails when in VC and likes texting in VC to be on task not texting to each other off task or privately. she says this causes split attention effects.
see what you think when you listen to the audio.
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also a link to a presentation (pdf) called: Leveraging the virtual classroom
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AND her new book at the bookstore.

The New Virtual Classroom:
Evidence-based Guidelines for Synchronous e-Learning

Contents:
Introduction: Meet the New Virtual Classroom
Part I: Learning and the New Virtual Classroom
Part II: Engaging Participants in the New Virtual Classroom
Part III: Optimizing Your Virtual Events
Part IV: Creating Effective Learning Events in the New Virtual Classroom
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCzOJDJZHoBttdHAjJsnN9w?sub_confirmation=1

Part Two: Open Pedagogy – What is web-based Open Education Practice, really?

What is web-based Open Education Practice?
Open Educational Practices (OEP) constitute the range of practices around the creation, use and management of open educational resources with the intent to improve quality and innovate education (OPAL, 2011).

This definition is simple, yet the concept is more complex than realised at first. What are these open education resources (OER) and how did they come about? What is their potential for learning and teaching? How can they be created, used and managed in our educational organisations? Why could they potentially improve quality and innovation in education? What are the benefits and what are the barriers? Who should be doing this? This series will hopefully assist you to identify the meaning of open education practices and find answers to these questions.

A history
To understand what the terms Open Education Resource (OER) and Open Education Practice (OEP) mean, it is necessary to look back at how the concepts has arisen. The arrival of the Internet probably triggered the widespread use of this term because it was considered a disruptive technology when it landed on our educational doorstep many years ago. This “global platform” disrupted or changed how learners and teachers could access and share information and materials, and encouraged a new culture of learning.  A culture where learners could access any materials they needed with or without the help of a teacher, and share anything and everything (Thomas & Seely Brown, 2011).

Disruptive technology 
A term attributed to electronic tools that change the way we think, act and work. The Internet has led to significant changes in society and is therefore regarded as disruptive as are many technologies associated with it.    

In the mid-2000s, when Web 2.0 tools and approaches emerged as a phenomenon, they enabled global sharing of information, knowledge, ideas and also the materials that educators created (Brake, 2013). According to Conole, de Laat, Dillon and Darby (2008) the arrival of “new forms of mobile, internet and social software technologies” enabled “distributed collaboration” and a new direction for learning and the way we could  “consume and produce new artefacts’ (p. 511).  This changed the status quo. Teachers and learners could now interact more easily, share their work and collaborate in the learning environment. This disruption, or as some practitioners believe, innovation, led to the Open Education Resource (OER) movement and the Cape Town Open Education Declaration inviting managers and practitioners to engage with open educational resources (Open Society Institute & Shuttleworth Foundation, 2007 –  http://www.capetowndeclaration.org/). Presently, 2712 signatories have contributed to the Declaration.

Otago Polytechnic signed the declaration in 2008 when educational development work at the organization was foremost in international efforts for Open Education (Blackall & Hegarty, 2011).
In the declaration, open education is described as more than open educational resources and is regarded as a mechanism that makes use of open technologies to “facilitate collaborative, flexible learning and the open sharing of teaching practices that empower educators to benefit from the best ideas of their colleagues” (para 4). It also has the potential to change not only how we teach and learn but also how we assess. 

How has history changed Open Education Practices?
Disruptive technologies are the foundation of open education resources and practices. They can be a good thing for pedagogical innovation and act as a catalyst to transform practice (Conole, de Laat, Dillon & Darby, 2008). However, the changes may occur too fast and exceed the rate at which teachers can adopt them confidently or before the infrastructure of an organization is prepared enough to manage them.  Ruth Jelly has compiled an overview of the literature and therein presents a number of case studies describing the evolution of the open education movement in Open Education Practices: A User Guide for Organisations and Individuals written by Leigh Blackall and edited by Bronwyn Hegarty (2011).

Out of the disruption caused by open education resources, web-based social learning and informal learning was born. Participation is the core component of social learning. Knowledge and understanding is constructed through the conversations and interactions learners have with others, generally about issues and actions (Brown & Adler, 2008). The focus shifts from what is learned to how people learn, and the connectivity amongst learners is enhanced. 

In the new culture of learning, the “stable infrastructure of the twenty-first century” has become a more dynamic infrastructure where technologies are changing constantly (Thomas & Seely Brown, 2011, p. 17). Even so, learning environments in this new culture do need boundaries and structure. These need to be designed to inspire the learner to move freely within the educative opportunities provided, regardless of whether this occurs in formal education or in everyday life (Thomas & Seely Brown, 2011).

This new wave of learning is considered by Thomas and Seely Brown (2011) to be “arc-of-life learning”, where play, questioning and imagination are pivotal to the continual quest for knowledge (p. 19).  The key is that learning occurs seamlessly between the classroom and everyday activities. Most importantly the concepts of ‘play’ and ‘tinkering’ are encouraged so that learning throughout life becomes more like a game; it is fun. This new culture of learning requires two things, according to Thomas and Seely Brown (2011), firstly, ready access to a network of information and secondly a “bounded and structured environment” with unlimited scope to experiment (p. 19).  To facilitate this, open and collaborative networks and communities and openly shared repositories of information that are readily accessible and in which anyone can participate are essential. In the new culture of learning, engagement in the process is key (Thomas & Seely Brown, 2011). 

Having “time and permission to play, openness and learning from play” were key themes that emerged from case study research conducted into digital information literacy by Jeffrey, Hegarty, Kelly, Penman, Coburn and McDonald in 2011 (p. 394). For participants, engagement in accessing open digital web-based networks and platforms led to a transformation in how they learned and in their personal development. 

Keeping openness in mind when designing learning is also discussed by Conole (2013) and she acknowledges several challenges associated with this, for example, the varying definitions and lack of agreement on what the term means. Some aspects of openness were explained in part one of this series using a model for Open Education Practices.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCzOJDJZHoBttdHAjJsnN9w?sub_confirmation=1

Inspiration Plus Creativity Equals Innovative Teaching And Learning

Source: ASIDE, 2015

Education is smack in the middle of an earth swell of change. No matter how hard the system tries to maintain a rigid set of evaluative assessments, something has to give. Otherwise, we will lose too many teachers over restrictions, and worse, too many young people who know that outside of school the freedom to learn, experiment, and create exists.

Source: ASIDE, 2015

Sure, we know that the fundamentals of reading and writing are key to understanding complex information. We are not advocates for throwing the baby out with the bath water. But perhaps the recent change in Finland to dump teaching subjects in favor of topics should send shockwaves through a system that constantly tries to reinvent itself with nothing more than new standards.

Source: ASIDE, 2015

One of our mantras over the last few years with our learners has been to, “Look at more stuff. Think about it harder.” We don’t claim to take this as our own, but recently we felt compelled to revisit one of our favorite books, Look At More: A Proven Approach to Innovation, Growth, and Change, by Andy Stefanovich.

While we know that schools are not businesses, we also know that the insights Stefanovich tries to bring to companies apply to any institution with the desire to promote innovative thinking. His ideas and concepts cross over into any discipline. His fundamental formula:

 I + C = I, or Inspiration + Creativity = Innovation


This equation also applies to education. We seek to inspire our learners to use creative thinking to come up with innovative ideas; likewise, we hope to do the same with our approach to teaching.

To inspire others is, after all, why we teach. We rely on inspiration as the fuel for engagement. Just like a business, we want to encourage an environment of productivity for learners. To do this, we can no longer sacrifice inspiration for efficiency.

Source: ASIDE, 2015

The framework behind LAMSTAIH includes five key drivers, including mood, mindset, mechanisms, measurement, and momentum to push the thinking and change the behavior in order to extract new ideas.

The concept behind each “M” not only provides a way for leadership to look at the needs of an institution, but it also helps to promote innovative ways of teaching and learning. Educational conversations circle around many of the same ideas.

So perhaps we could learn a thing or two by looking at more, including the insightful description of the three kinds of curators mentioned the book. On the one hand we have the traditionalist, who is the keeper of objects with the role of making sure that people of the future benefit from the collection of knowledge, and the Zeitgeist curator, who captures the essence of today and connects it to the not too distant future. This sounds like the role of the teacher. And then there is the hunter-gatherer curator, who constantly searches for anything that interests him or her and shares it with the world. Sound familiar? This represents most of the learners we teach.

Source: ASIDE, 2015

So where are teachers and learners as curators? More importantly, where do we want to be? At the moment, many educators are in the middle, yet our students outside of school are hunting and gathering.

Life-long learning is far more like the migrating hunter-gatherer, and technology has opened that door. We need to harness that energy, that inspiration, and that understanding of the power of connections to explore ideas. We can’t keep kids from exploring, connecting, and learning; we want them to be inspired,

The Benefits Of Good Design – Resources For Community College Learners

Source: ASIDE 2015


Community college students everyday interact with a range of materials: handouts, worksheets, outlines, templates, PowerPoints, etc. From the simplest to the most complex, these resources are sometimes the primary conduits for information and training. The design of these materials, therefore, matters. The visual presentation of instructional tools can make the difference between detachment and engagement, between reticence and retention.

One of the touchstones of the design world is the unity of form and function. This “big picture / small picture” harmony is an equally crucial lesson for teachers and learners of all ages. Whereas art is something we look at, design is something we use everyday. It gives context to content and supports the relationship between the two. Good design of information delivers content that is engaging to the eye without becoming a distraction. It guides the attention through carefully controlled and selected visual components; it retreats to the background, enabling the purpose of the finished product to come forward.

Source: ASIDE, Tommy McCall

In creating both tangible and digital presentations for college learners, educators can ask themselves about the desired purpose, audience, and format of their materials. Similarly, considerations of layout, font, color, and alignment can make positive differences in conveying crucial concepts. A few notions to keep in mind include:

  • Visual media bombard the modern eye
  • Images increase the level of engagement and retention
  • Design creates meaning and relationships
  • The eye reads many types of “texts”
  • Simple tools and techniques can aid understanding
  • Emphasis, typography, hue, layout, and balance are key
Source: ASIDE 2015


We recently had the privilege of discussing these ideas with the faculty of the Department Of Reading And Basic Education at Nassau Community College (NCC) in New York. It was a pleasure speaking to them for their spring professional development. Our session was entitled, “The Benefits Of Good Design: Simple Strategies For Creating Elegant and Effective Materials To Engage Students.” All of the slides, links, and resources from our presentation can be found here.

Many thanks to the warm and welcoming educators at NCC for inviting us and for being such gracious hosts. It was a pleasure sharing ideas and exploring the potential of visuals to make a difference in the lives of learners. We look forward to staying in touch and continuing the dialogue about design!

The Blue Heart Campaign To End Human Trafficking

Source: UN

While we know many schools are not in session, we felt it important to write about the United Nations’ Blue Heart Campaign on the second World Day Against Trafficking of Humans. The first was on July 30, 2014.

Source: UN


With the growing problem of human trafficking, particularly of women and children, this day hopes to raise awareness of the plight of these victims and to protect their rights.


The Blue Heart Campaign seeks to educate others about the impact of this crime on society by inspiring others to take action through a show of solidarity. We spend a significant amount of time talking with our students about human rights abuses that all too often seem a regular feature on the nightly news. Since the issue of human trafficking can be a sensitive topic, we are always in search of resources that we can use with our learners. The infographics in this post provide visual tools to help.

Source: UN


Last year, we did our own push to make students aware of the International Declaration of Human Rights and what they mean for them. We used the website Youth for Human Rights and watched each of the 30 videos. Our students were surprised by the information and statistics, and in their innocence, they could not fathom these violations happening today. This made a huge difference in their understanding of historical and current issues.

Source: UN

As we get ready to start the school year, we plan to continue to integrate human rights into the conversation, and we hope others do as well.

A Philosophy Of Education: Energy, Inspiration, And Understanding

Source: ASIDE 2015

This week we were asked to share our philosophies of education. It was a worthy question and a worthwhile endeavor. Even though like most teachers we’ve gone through many versions of these philosophies over the years, it was thought-provoking to reframe our tenets as both learning and we have evolved. We thought we might publish our current thoughts, to see what other educators think and to invite feedback about other philosophies of teaching in today’s learning climate:

~
If students were given a choice about which classes to attend each day, would they choose our classes? Is there something about the tone, the environment, the practice, or the design of information that makes our time seem worthwhile to learners?
One of our mantras with learners has been to “Look at more stuff; think about it harder.” We seek to inspire learners to use creative thinking to come up with innovative ideas; likewise, we hope to do the same with our approach to teaching. In their schooling, students hope to experience moments of wonder. An instance of surprise or curiosity, even if brief, can make all the different in motivating learners to explore and delve deeply. Insight leads to ownership, which makes meaningful the internalization of skills or concepts. One “ah ha” moment is worth one hundred perfect test scores.
To inspire others is, after all, why we teach. We rely on inspiration as the fuel for engagement. We want to encourage an environment that fosters creativity, inquiry, ownership, and independence. Learners need a stimulating environment that fuels inspiration and a hunger for knowledge. This atmosphere refers to both the physical space and the personality of the teacher. Is the room stimulating and engaging? Is the layout flexible and complementary to the learning? Furthermore, is the temperament of the teacher encouraging, with an authentic sense of optimism about the journey the learner and the educator are about to take together?

It is not about efficiency and compliance; instead, it is about things like mindset, mood, mechanisms, measurement, and momentum that push the critical thinking process in order to extract new ideas. What is the tone of the instructor’s language? What is the tenor of the student-teacher relationship? A bit of humor, for example, can be key to keeping the mood light and productive. A sincere repartee can make the minutes tick by with less tedium and maybe even some anticipation.

Source: ASIDE 2015

The more interdisciplinary, collaborative, and challenging approaches we use, the greater the chance to develop individuals that are confident to take risks. In this vein, teaching and learning is a partnership. A conversational style or technological savvy can help validate students’ daily experiences and show an effort to connect to their worlds – to what is important to them. This connection stems from mutual trust. Students want to trust that their teachers are laying out clear expectations, that their grades are based on fair assessments, that their learning is in the hands of an expert. If students don’t trust that we as teachers are going to keep our word, treat them with decency, and give them the benefit of the doubt, then they will tune out everything else we try to communicate.

Today, learning is no longer limited to the teacher as keeper of the knowledge, nor to the moment with little connection to the future. It has to be deeper; it is about understanding. We want students to be more like hunter-gatherers, who constantly search for anything that interests them and who share it with the world. Life-long learning is far more like the migrating hunter-gatherer, and technology has opened that door. 
We hope to harness that energy, that inspiration, and that understanding of the power of connections to explore ideas. Our hope is to tap a learner’s inspiration and creativity so that they develop as innovative thinkers and knowledge seekers.
As teachers, we want to engage students:

  • To think like designers to transform the way they learn and look at the world
  • To develop flexibility in their thinking about ways to learn, and to tap their curiosity
  • To grow to be open-minded individuals who are knowledgeable about historical events
  • To gain confidence about what they know to share their understanding and enthusiasm for history and geography with others
  • To help them develop a curiosity for learning through the creation of their own work
  • To provide a range of choices for them to visually map their ideas to realize there is more than one way of seeing
  • To design curriculum to meet the information, technology and new media literacies needs of today’s learners through current best practices that incorporate digital learning, technology integration, and social media
  • To develop flexibility in their thinking about ways to learn, and to help them feel comfortable with being uncomfortable
  • To promote honest discussions about disparities in society such as race and class to promote empathy for our differences
  • To recognize, value, and assess the many diverse ways children learn and how to meet them there

How To Comment In Social Media – An Infographic Of Tips For High Quality Feedback


Students are writing more than ever before. They are tapping out rapid-fire fingerstrokes across multiple platforms. From text messages to social media, children and adults of all ages are engaging like never before with the written word. This type of transliteracy emphasizes more than ever the need for thoughtful conversations and clear instructions that guide students in how best to express high quality feedback.

Most remarks in the comment sections of Instagram and YouTube are useless. They are either crass or curt, sprinkled with emoji that do more to satisfy the ego of the commenter than to further the richness of the page.

Instead, high quality comments on blogs and social media should create a dialogue that furthers the colloquy and deepens the learning. Replies on Twitter, for example, should offer suggestions or make interpersonal connections. Thoughtful comments in social media should add information, incorporate links, or most importantly, ask questions.

Susan Sedro offers a terrific post about “Teaching Children To Comment On Blogs” on her site, “Adventures In Educational Blogging.” She includes a presentation, a document, and a rubric to help teachers incorporate successful commenting into their lessons. Similarly, Danielle Degelman recently shared on Twitter (@deedegs) a photo of her whiteboard with excellent tips on helping students comment successfully.

We learned a lot from both Sedro’s and Degelman’s suggestions. For our own learners, we combined these two teachers’ ideas with a few of our own to make a handy one-sheet for our students. For example, our seventh-graders used it to exchange feedback via Twitter (#BCDSHist7) on their Thirteen Colonies research projects.

Here is the infographic we made to promote positive engagement through social media:

Student Video Projects In Vine: The Six-Second Constraint Encourages Creativity














Source: Vine

Poets have long considered the sonnet and the quatrain as the highest forms of poetry. The strict meters, the rigid rhyme schemes, and the unbreakable line limits force poets to create elegant verse within exacting structures. In other words, if writers can craft soaring language under such restrictive rules, then they have true talent.

Making Vine videos with students falls into a similar category. Vine is a social network owned by Twitter that allows users to record or upload clips no more than 6.5 seconds in length. With over 200 million users and 1.5 billion daily loops, Vine has created overnight celebrities and has changed the way kids watch, generate, and share content.
















The ease of publishing makes Vine a terrific tool for the classroom. The strict time limit of the videos forces students to maximize the pithiness of their messages. In other words, the short videos demand:

  1. Efficiency of narration
  2. Effectiveness of visuals
  3. Concision of message

Students cannot be wasteful in language or vague in communication. They must get their points across succinctly and above all creatively. They are compelled to invent novel ways to pack a lot of meaning into a tight space.
















For example, our eighth-graders have been studying how technology and inventions transformed society in the late 1800s. We, therefore, invited them to conduct a mini-research project about modern inventions in the contemporary era that have similarly revolutionized daily life. Our instructions, storyboards, and rubrics are included in this post. We have also included several examples of the innovative approaches that students took to produce these brief films. For other ideas about incorporating Vine in the classroom, check out 20 Ways To Use Twitter’s Vine In Education.

As with all social media, there is plenty of content on Vine that would not be appropriate for all ages. That is why digital citizenship needs to be a crucial partner with digital publishing. As with all online activities, educators need to encourage students to be their own filters, to use their own good judgment in engaging with social media.

Social Media Is An Opportunity – Not A Problem In The Classroom

Source: ASIDE 2015


The resolute attitude of many schools to resist the “Social Age” by blocking websites within their walls strikes at the core of what it means to collectively share ideas. The system seems stuck in the notion that kids will do bad things if they have access to social media. Hello! They have access to it anyway, just not in school. We shake our heads every time we hear educators who want to share digital projects but can’t because of a school’s firewall. Some educators depend on the very students they teach to share when the leave the building in order to promote their work.

Source: ASIDE 2015

We value the opportunities at our disposal for creating digital portfolios with our students, running Tumblr pages for the humanities, maps, and classwork, using Twitter (@BCDS_History_56, @BCDS_History_78>)and Kidblog, and sharing through Padlet to engage in the open practice of real-life skills.

Social media is not the culprit. In this day and age, digital environments are not separate from physical environments. If we want our students to understand the importance of building a healthy, digital footprint for prospective college applications and employment, then practice is imperative. It can’t be taught from a book.

Source: ASIDE 2015

Like other educators, we see the value in using social media. We are fortunate to work in a school that believes students learn by actively and responsibly participating in an online community of practice. We firmly believe that learning communities that allow students to use social media in their education build stronger digital citizens. They also encourage parents to be more proactive in the online behavior of their children by participating as digital partners.

We made a passionate plea to educators in our presentation, entitled “Tear Down This Firewall: Using Social Media To Engage Students And Parents,” at the annual NYSCATE conference. We showed multiple ways that we have incorporated social media in the elementary and middle school classrooms, as well as demonstrated how the skills learned from social media include context, framing, information, perspective, questioning, and problem-solving. We hope the solid foundation in instruction behind our students’ work will provide motivation for others to approach their administrations to unblock valuable web resources for learning. We included our SlideShare presentation here.

Tear Down This Firewall: Using Social Media To Engage Students & Parents from The American Society For Innovation Design In Education

The value of modeling, practicing, and incorporating social media into the curricula to better educate learners for a world that exists now is vital to their development. It builds the collectiveness of the community and a trusted bond between all participants, including administrators, faculty, students, and parents. Most importantly, it takes the fear out of the equation.

 In 2010, Rachel Botsam coined the term “collaborative consumption” in her critically acclaimed book, What’s Mine is Yours: How Collaborative Consumption is Changing the Way We Live. The theory of “collaborative consumption” is the reinvention of traditional market behaviors that are taking place at a rate not seen before as a result of technology. These changes affect more than just the economy; they influence and disrupt traditional learning environments as well. It shouldn’t be a “Them vs. Us” mentality; instead, it should build a collaborative network of making, sharing, and responding.

Source: ASIDE 2015

Yet despite this social revolution in an on-demand, real-time world, schools are still resistant to change, even though educators try desperately to show the value of collaborative work by using social networking.

As for the students, the firewalls may not be crumbling yet inside the bricks and mortar, but outside, learning takes on a life of its own, unfiltered without restrictions. They hunt and gather wherever they can, and technology has opened that door.

Students need to construct their social capital through shared networks, and schools need to participate in building it, not restricting it.

For other resources please see:

The 5 Best STEM Animations For 2016

Source: scenes.https://vimeo.com/126733859, WWF Brazil – Marine Program


2015 was a banner year for animations to engage students. These dynamic explainer videos proved definitively that print textbooks cannot keep up with educational, up-to-date motion graphics, especially in the sciences.

The sphere of subjects that fall into STEM’s orbit keeps expanding. For better or for worse, K-12 courses are now binarly split into either “STEM” or “Humanities” categories. We would argue that this bifurcation is harmful, erasing the natural overlaps between the sciences and the liberal arts.

The effect, however, is that more and more designers and educators are creating brilliant interactive companions to traditional learning. Here are five favorite animations from the past year that will allow science and math teachers (as well as those in the Humanities) to kick off 2016 with a bang:

1. Math


This lively explainer video from Vox offers a primer in chart theory, as well as a caveat for undiscerning viewers of graphs. Entitled “Shut Up About The Y-Axis. It Shouldn’t Always Start At Zero,” the clip reminds math students that context is key in both reading and creating data graphics.

2. Environmental & Marine Science


B- Marine Program from scenes. on Vimeo.

This beautiful stop-motion animation offers a moving case study about the effects of urbanization on pollution. The “WWF Brazil – Marine Program” video, made in collaboration between scenes. and Wildgroeiers, highlights critical issues of conservation and biodiversity for any age group.

3. Astronomy


BC Earth has designed a clear and compelling motion graphic to emphasize the size of the universe and the speed of earth’s galactic travels. The 3D visualization employs time and scale to bring astrophysics to life.

4. Oceanography & Earth Science

Source: Cameron Beccario


Software engineer Cameron Beccario (@cambecc) has programmed a stunning representation of the earth’s weather conditions. With regularly updated ocean currents, waves, temperatures, and anomalies, this interactive globe allows students to zoom in and rotate a la Google Earth. The educational opportunities range from oceanographers analyzing climate change to historians studying ancient trade routes.

5. Medicine


Source: The Washington Post


The recent Ebola panic prompted The Washington Post to create this precise simulation that compares the disease’s spread to other historical pandemics. Although the original interactive graphic pre-dates 2015, the updates are important to medical students and social scientists who are trying to track contraction, infection, transmission, and vaccination.

Honorable Mention: Ecology & Forestry


This seemingly simple motion graphic by Nature Video brings into startling relief the rate of global deforestation. Researchers made 421,529 separate measurements around the world to produce an irrefutable data-driven image of the changing planet.

For more resources, take a look at last year’s five best animations, or some of our other posts about animations in the classroom:

The GIFT Box – Help Unwrap Human Trafficking In 2016

Source: London Olympics 2012 – UN

With each passing year, we see a growth in awareness of the plight of the less fortunate, particularly those suffering at the hands of human traffickers. We’ve written posts about the topic of slavery and Human Rights, but recently we came across the GIFT box project that is currently on view at The Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine in New York City.

Source: UN GIFT

The United Nations Global Initiative to Fight Human Trafficking and STOP THE TRAFFIK worked together to create the GIFT box to raise awareness of the more than 21 million people forced into labor. The GIFT box project was launched during the London 2012 Olympics.

Since that time, STOP THE TRAFFIK partnered with other organizations and governments to build more GIFT boxes around the globe. To date, its journey has introduced over 55,000 people in approximately 100 locations across 6 countries to the issue of human trafficking.

At this time of year when gift giving is so much a part of the holiday spirit, it seemed fitting to write about it as we close out the year of 2015 to help this effort. The beautifully wrapped GIFT box on the outside reveals the horrors that plague the victims of human trafficking on the inside. The exterior promises a better life, an education, a good job, and a loving relationship, but the interior presents a very different reality.

Source: UN GIFT


Build human rights into the curricula at your school. The Youth for Human Rights website makes it easy to take any of the 30 principles all individuals are entitled to under The Universal Declaration of Human Rights and incorporate them into a learning environment. It offers teachers a wealth of resources that can be easily downloaded to use in the classroom. It also provides short video clips for each of the rights. If your school is has a 1:1 program, we encourage educators to use its free app with students.

Let’s make 2016 the year we all help to unwrap the dreadful truth about human trafficking.




For other resources, please see:

We're Big Fans: World Sketchnote Day 2016

Source: Sketchnote Army

Sketchnoting plays an integral part in our curricula, and we incorporate them whenever we can to help learners connect to content. This personal form of note-taking allows students to use the visual thinking process to design information in real-time through words and images. So it is with great pleasure that we recognize the inaugural, kick-off event for World Sketchnote Day. Follow the day on Twitter using the hashtag #SNDay2016 to see some amazing examples.

We’ve been huge fans of the process and have witnessed its extraordinary appeal to our students. While we encourage them to use sketchnotes whenever they choose, we often hear cheers of delight when we make it an active part of a lesson.

Source: ASIDE 2016


Our students understand that the visual cues in the sketchnote process help them connect to the material and enhance their recall of the content. Visually engaging with the information broadens connections and opens up the design process to think about the relationships between text and image.

We’ve watched the evolution in how students use sketchnotes to visually organize their information and to create a structural framework for the content they are learning.

There are lots of resources available to educators, and one of the most comprehensive is Kathy Shrock’s guide to using Sketchnoting In The Classroom.

For a quick reference to help our students, we developed the one-page cheat sheet in this post as a handy guide to keep in their binders. Click here to download the PDF.

For other posts about sketchnoting in the classroom, please see:

We're Big Fans: World Sketchnote Day 2016

Source: Sketchnote Army

Sketchnoting plays an integral part in our curricula, and we incorporate them whenever we can to help learners connect to content. This personal form of note-taking allows students to use the visual thinking process to design information in real-time through words and images. So it is with great pleasure that we recognize the inaugural, kick-off event for World Sketchnote Day. Follow the day on Twitter using the hashtag #SNDay2016 to see some amazing examples.

We’ve been huge fans of the process and have witnessed its extraordinary appeal to our students. While we encourage them to use sketchnotes whenever they choose, we often hear cheers of delight when we make it an active part of a lesson.

Source: ASIDE 2016


Our students understand that the visual cues in the sketchnote process help them connect to the material and enhance their recall of the content. Visually engaging with the information broadens connections and opens up the design process to think about the relationships between text and image.

We’ve watched the evolution in how students use sketchnotes to visually organize their information and to create a structural framework for the content they are learning.

There are lots of resources available to educators, and one of the most comprehensive is Kathy Shrock’s guide to using Sketchnoting In The Classroom.

For a quick reference to help our students, we developed the one-page cheat sheet in this post as a handy guide to keep in their binders. Click here to download the PDF.

For other posts about sketchnoting in the classroom, please see:

Teaching Tolerance: America's Story Is An Immigration Story

Source: ASIDE 2016

With the continual debate in our nation’s government over the immigration policy, and the political rhetoric of the current crop of presidential candidates, it is no wonder that our students have misinformation and questions about immigration. No matter how you slice it, the United States is a nation of immigrants who contributed their blood, sweat, and tears to build the country we are today. America’s story is an immigration story, of people who continue to become productive citizens, defend our country, work hard, and help this country grow.

We are increasingly alarmed by the lack of understanding of just how much immigrants have contributed to who we are as a nation. The following motion graphic, entitled “Immigration and Growth,” was produced by the George W. Bush Institute, and the statistical information brings to light just how much of an impact immigrants have made to the economy. The students are surprised to learn that immigrants account for one-third of new small business owners, or that 40 percent of Fortune 500 companies were founded by first or second generation immigrants.



The motion graphic called Just The Facts provides an additional, straightforward delivery of information about immigration in order to try to debunk some of the misinformation that leads people to make assumptions based on political alliances. It offers some enlightening statistics about who’s here, who commits crimes, and who works.



Lastly, the recent article titled “The Secret Of Immigration Genius” by Eric Weiner in The Wall Street Journal sheds further light on the geography of genius that results from the influx of foreigners. He drives home the point that having your world turned upside down sparks creative thinking. Weiner points to recent research on the role of “schema violations” in intellectual development.

Source: The Wall Street Journal

This occurs when your world is full of turmoil, causing temporal and spacial cues to be thrown off balance. People uprooted from the familiar see the world from a different angle, giving them another perspective that enables them to surpass the merely talented, including Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, and Marie Curie to name a few.

Weiner refers to studies based on historical analysis that support how creativity is spurred by the intermingling of cultures, and perhaps “we should be wise to view the welcome mat not as charity, but, rather, as enlightened self-interest.”

As we enter into a presidential year, which from the outset seems more combative that ever, we need to constantly provide our students with a variety of viewpoints and build a learning community that questions information by not accepting everything they hear as gospel truth. As a nation built on the contributions of immigrants, it is our responsibility.

Powerful Visualization On Gun Violence And Why We Should Show This To Our Students

Source: Washington Post

With the continual barrage of news about gun violence in America, it’s important that we use all available resources to help students give context to content, and visualizations help us do that. This motion graphic titled, 2015: A Year In Mass Shooting and produced by The Washington Post, is a powerful tool to educate young people about this issue. The headline, “374 mass shooting in 365 days in one extraordinary graphic,” travels across the calendar year, pausing only once for the longest period without a shooting. As you watch, the headlines from newspapers around the country appear as the timeline progresses, but it is the voices from the 911 calls that capture the enormity of the human toll.


This motion graphic could easily be tied into any media or news literacy lesson using the headlines connected with the timeline of events. It is worth the watch with middle and high school students, and it is guaranteed to invite and spur discussions about the topic.