A4: Creating a Digital Demonstration

For my PGCE interview we were required to do a 5 minute micro-teach to our peers. I decided to teach how to make an origami kusudama flower because this would get my audience engaged rather than listening passively. I taught myself how to do this from picture demonstrations but found that it was not until I attempted it myself that I noticed the difficulty it was to understand the stages using this mode of teaching. Therefore I decided to create a video. I did wish to film from a birds-eye position but I did not have the equipment to do this. Instead I used my laptops built-in webcam.

This practice allowed me to see the timing of the activity, but also how it will appear to others. This then made me aware of how my hands may be often blocking their view. Therefore I have made a mental note to pause and show the group at each stage. I think this is an effective strategy for teachers as they are able to perceive how the children perceive demonstrations.

While I had achieved my purposes from filming the demonstration, I decided to make use of the editing tools available on youtube. I then used text, transition signals and audio to make the video more interesting. I also experimented with the filters to make the picture look sharper for clarity. Using youtube to edit the video made the uploading of it simple and quick, and their tools gave me further ideas. However, in choosing this simple editing tool, I sacrificed the extent I could edit. Therefore, my ability to be individually creative was limited. For example, I wanted to add text on top of the video to explain certain steps yet the tools were not set up to do this. However, this did prompt me to look at other devices to teach this skill (A5).