Blog 3- Voice Over Presentation on Domestic Animals

Recently I read an article on the internet about the ICT integration in modern classroom. From the article, I learnt that ICT acts as a catalyst for future innovation in teaching and learning practices. Since last year with the outbreak of the pandemic Covid 19 around the world, ICT has played a major role in the teaching and learning field. Now ICT has become mandatory tool for every teacher to use in their teaching profession. Teachers first need to be very well equipped with the knowledge of ICT in order to impart their lessons to the students. In this blog, I will be jotting on teaching the class one students about the domestic animals under the subject, English. Students in the classroom might have been bored with the everyday instructional teaching method. Well, for this blog I have come up with a new idea to integrate one of the ICT tools in order convey the contents on domestic animals to my students.

I will be using PowerPoint voice over recordings to teach on domestic animals to class one students. The PowerPoint voice over feature allows us to record and embed speech audio clips in our slides where we can playback the entire presentation complete with voice narration solely on Power Point. This voice over on power point will keep my students engaged because it will break the monotony of usual power point presentation. It will help my students understand the slides better.

Creation of the teaching material

Before narrating the voice over the presentation, I first created a presentation in Microsoft power point. I made use of all the tools present in the Microsoft power point. Since I was creating presentation for the students of grade one, I made sure to put more of photographs and graphics than the words in my presentation. I did a mind mapping on how I should go on with the presentation in order to enhance my students’ learning. Before starting with the creation of the presentation, I downloaded the real pictures of some of the domestic animals in our Bhutanese context from the internet. I started creating my presentation on a blank slide where I wrote the title of my lesson as ‘Domestic animals’ and included the subject as ‘English’ along with grade as ‘One’. To make the slide attractive I used some clip arts of animals by going to the Insert and then Clip Art. I kept the background for the slide a complete white throughout the presentation. I used Gill Sans MT for the text font throughout my presentation. I included six domestic animals in my presentation. In one slide I wrote a simple definition of the word ‘domestic animal’. To talk about how I presented the domestic animals in my presentation is first I wrote the name of the domestic animal at the title of slide. Following I inserted the real photograph of the particular animal by going to Insert and then Pictures. Then I wrote the description of that domestic animal in four to five lines with the help of Text Box. To drag the text box beside or below the picture, I went to the Insert and clicked the Text Box. After clicking the text box, wherever I kept my cursor and clicked on it, the text box appeared and I typed the text I wanted to. I was mindful of not putting too much information in the slide. I included simple and understandable sentences in the slides.

Further to make my students understand much better with visual representation, I made sure to insert pictures related to domestic animals. I added different types of animations in every slide to make the presentation interesting, lively and attractive for the viewers. To add animation on the texts and  pictures in the slides, first I selected that particular text or picture. Then I went to the Animations pane. After that I clicked on the Custom Animation where the custom animation dialog box appeared at the right side of the slide. From there, I tapped on Add Effect and selected my desired effect from the lists. For all the animations in my slides, I adjusted the start of the animations as One Click and the speed as Medium.  My presentation consists of sixteen slides. After having completed with creating the presentation, I put voice over the slides. To put the narrations over the slides, I went to the Slide Show pane. From there I clicked on Record Narration. I started recording the narration from the first slide and went narrating till the end of the slide. Then I saved the narration. I already had my scripts written on a notebook so that I can refer it in the midst of narration if I happen to forget the lines. I did the recording and I listened on my own narrations. I did the recording several times till I was satisfied with my own narration.  When narrating, I spoke so naturally in a tone similar to how I usually speak with the students in a classroom. I made sure to be in a place free of noises while recording the narration in order to avoid disruptive when my students listen to it.

After having done with the recording of the narration over my slides, I converted the presentation into video. For doing this, I went to the File then selected Export and tapped on Create a Video. In the first drop-down box under the Create a Video heading, I selected the video quality I wanted. I clicked Create Video. After that in the File name box, I entered a file name for the video, browse for the folder that will contain this and then clicked Save. The voice over presentation on domestic animals will help me to impart the names of domestic animals found in Bhutan. Students will also learn about what those eat in order to live, where those animals live and what those animals provide to the human beings. Thus this voice over presentation will be my instructional material in the classroom. To check the understanding of the presentation taught to my students, I will provide them with a work sheet on which they will do an activity.

Activity: The activity is for individual. Students will be given a worksheet each. They have to write about one domestic animal found in their locality. They will first draw the animal and then write in about three sentences about the animal. They can also colour the animal if they want. They will be given 8 minutes for the activity. Through the activity, I can clearly make out whether my students have understand the presentation or not. Accordingly, I will do a follow up of the activity. 

Instructions for the use of content-based material

I will be using the content-based material i.e. the voice over power point presentation during the LESSON DEVELOPMENT. After having introduced the topic, instead of me giving lecture about the domestic animals, I will present them the voice over presentation where they will not only see but also will have to listen carefully. When the voice over presentation is showed to the entire students in a classroom, students will be able to see the real picture of the animals along with their description. They can relate the pictures way back at their home where some of them even might be rearing those domestic animals and most of them might have seen them. The pictures in the presentation will help the students to activate their background knowledge on domestic animals. The pictures will also give clear and concrete images of how those animals look in reality. Moreover the combination of the texts and pictures in my presentation with a voice over will help my students understand the explanation better. A voice over will also give extra information to the students where similar text and pictures won’t suffice on their own. It will give my students an extra medium through which to absorb important information. After students finish watching the presentation, they will be assigned an activity related to domestic animals in order to check their understanding of the presentation. Then the lesson will be wrapped up with some students summarizing the key points about domestic animals in the classroom. 

Through this voice over presentation, I want to ensure the students of grade one to:

·         tell the names of some domestic animals from the presentation

·         write few sentences to describe one or two domestic animals

·         draw any domestic animals of their choice

·         tell the importance of domestic animals in our lives

In order to make appropriate use of this content based-material, both teacher and children must be ready with a projector, laptop and also sound box in a classroom. Probably the IT labs/rooms can be used to project the presentation to the children due to easy availability of the projectors and computers in the room. Without the presence of projector, it will be difficult to display the presentation clearly and visibly to all the children. 

 Thank You

Blog 2- Teaching of National Symbols of the country through Simulation

In this blog, I will be writing on the teaching of the topic ‘National Symbols’ from the textbook of Social Studies, grade five. For me basically, it is important for all the citizens of Bhutan to know very well about the National Symbols of the country. Particularly I opted for this topic under Chapter six of the Social Studies textbook of grade five because I felt the importance of national symbols for the identity and sovereignty of our country. Therefore I made up my mind to integrate one of the ICT tools in this topic and convey the content to my dear students.

There are many ICT tools which I can use in order to teach the topic to the students. Lately in my ICT class I learnt about creating simulation in Microsoft power point presentation. Though it was challenging, it triggered me to create a simulation and use it in one of my blogs. This is the sole reason I will be using simulation to teach about the national symbols to my students. Simulations are instructional scenarios where the learner is placed in a "world" defined by the teacher. They represent a reality within which students interact. I believed that the simulation on National Symbols will promote the use of critical and evaluative thinking. Because they are ambiguous, they encourage students to contemplate the implications of a scenario. The situation feels real and thus leads to more engaging interaction by learners. Simulations promote concept of attainment through experiential practice. 

The above is the attached file of the simulation on National Symbol of the Country.

Creation of the teaching material

I have created the simulation in Microsoft power point presentation on the topic “National Symbols” for grade five by making the best use of all the features and tools available in it.  To transpire with my concluded simulation, firstly I chose a topic and grade level for my power point presentation. Next, I gathered all the prerequisite materials like image, GIF, background scene from google and saved it in a folder. Following I started preplanning on how to create a simulation with the help of all the required materials gathered. I made sure to plan on creating simulation step by step and wrote it in my notebook so that I can stay in track while creating the simulation.

Unlike other power point presentation, simulation has to be created over one slide only by adding one slide over another. Before creating the simulation, I started working on a blank slide first where I inserted a rectangle shape. The rectangle shape was my background scene at the initial of my simulation. To add the rectangle shape, I clicked the Insert tab first, clicked Shapes, selected the rectangle shape, and then clicked and dragged to draw the rectangle shape on my blank slide. To ensure a good color combination between the text and background of the shape I changed the background color for the shape. I selected the shape where the Drawing Tools appeared in the ribbon, with the Format tab active. Then I used the Shape fill available on the Format tab under Drawing Tools. Following, I added animation effect to it from Animations. I first selected the shape that I wanted to animate, selected Animations and chose an animation of my choice. Then I selected Effect Options and chose an effect of my choice. I followed the same procedures for animation on other images, graphics and texts that I wanted to put in my presentation.

There are different ways to start animations in the presentation such as On Click; With Previous; After Previous; Duration and Delay. Since I wanted to create a simulation where my presentation had to feature like real, I mostly made use of the timing With Previous in order to make adjustment in timing of effect for the images, shapes, clip arts, graphics and texts in my presentation. At times I needed to put more than one animation on the same image or text. In this case I selected an object or text with an animation. Then I selected Add Animation and chose one animation. In this presentation I also added animation to grouped objects or text. In order to do so I first pressed Ctrl and selected the objects that I wanted. I selected Format > Group > Group to group the objects together. Then I selected Animations and selected an animation of my choice on it. Since I had to feature national dress, national animal, national flower national bird and national flag of our country in the simulation, I downloaded the related images from the google and used those images. I did not create the image using shapes and all. I used the borrowed images.

After having created and put all the animations, background colours and all on the blank slide, I started compiling it over one slide to make simulation. It was not easy to create a simulation but since I already had preset of plans on how to arrange and make orders, I was able to complete the simulation. To copy and paste the objects having animation from one slide to another slide, I had to do it with the help of Format Painter. Without using the format painter to copy and paste the object from one slide to another, it could not copy the object along with the animation. Again I had to add animation on it. Therefore in order to save my time and energy, I copied and pasted the objects with animation using the Format painter from one slide to another. If I wanted to make any changes on the animations of the objects on the slide, I went to the Animations and selected Custom Animation. From custom animation, I could make the changes on the effects of animations I wanted to. So these are all about how I created a simple simulation on the ‘National Symbols’. My simulation comprises about the nine national symbols of our country with little description on each national symbol and also an activity for the students in order to check their understanding of the content.  

Instructions for the use of content-based material

With change of time, the way of teaching and learning must be transformed. Using simulation as a teaching material will help in enhancing students’ learning processes. Instead of sticking to the traditional monotonous learning method, we the teachers can teach using simulation which helps the child in long term memory retention. It can also be used as a reference and learning material in future for the students. I developed the material with a set of objectives in my mind. Through the simulation, I want to ensure the students of grade five to:

·         identify the national symbols of our country

·         explain the importance of each national symbol

I will use the material during lesson development. After having introduced the topic to the students, I will use the simulation for conveying the content during lesson development. Instead of me lecturing on the national symbols of the country, I will make best of the simulation created as an instructional tool in my classroom. Simulation will give the list of names of national symbols of our country. For each national symbol, they would be given some description of about few lines. Students will also perform an activity after the content has been conveyed to them. The activity will be instructed to the students through the simulation only after the explanation on the national symbols. The students need to carefully watch the simulation with full attention. The designed activity will help the children to further enhance their understating on national symbols of the country.

To present the simulation to the students, teacher must be ready with projector and a laptop in a classroom. So through the projector, teacher can show the simulation to the students and students can learn from it.

Thank You