For our first week in the course we were tasked with cre­at­ing a short 2–3 minute video intro­duc­ing our­selves, telling why we are inter­est­ed in learn­ing design, shar­ing what we believe makes for a pos­i­tive learn­ing expe­ri­ence, and explain­ing how we approach the task of design­ing learn­ing expe­ri­ences. We were asked to either use FLIP to cre­ate these, or to cre­ate them else­where and upload to this plat­form for our class­mates to see. 

I had tech­ni­cal dif­fi­cul­ties with my web­cam when try­ing to record this on Flip. There­fore,  I decid­ed to go the lat­ter route as one of my goals in this Mas­ters pro­gram is to learn new tech­nol­o­gy programs/websites/platforms/resources to enrich my stu­dents with these new expe­ri­ences any­way. I dis­cov­ered a web­site called PICTORY that allows you to cre­ate videos online using their AI resources. You can enter your script and their AI will deter­mine where to split the video into “slides” and insert their own short video clips for each slide that relates to key words from your script. You can over­write these videos clips by search­ing for oth­ers in their vast library, or use still pic­tures. You can also add text for titles and oth­er key word rep­re­sen­ta­tions, show closed cap­tions, use their AI voic­es for voice over, or use your own micro­phone to record your own voice. 

I chose to go one step fur­ther once I got my web­cam func­tion­ing again since I still had time before sub­mis­sion was due. I decid­ed to export the video with­out the voice over so I could upload into CANVA for addi­tion­al fea­tures. In Can­va I was able to add an addi­tion­al lay­er of video to this and record myself talk­ing in full video rather than only voice. 

I feel what was orig­i­nal­ly a very frus­trat­ing tech­no­log­i­cal chal­lenge turned out to be a pos­i­tive oppor­tu­ni­ty to try some­thing new. Take a look at the result:

Video Script:

Hi every­one, my name is Bryan Bar­ran­ti. I am a mid­dle school wood­work teacher in Fort St John, BC.

My edu­ca­tion­al jour­ney start­ed through BCIT and their archi­tec­tur­al draft­ing pro­gram.  After a lit­tle time work­ing on design­ing build­ings and such I decid­ed to go back to con­tin­ue my edu­ca­tion.

First through Simon Fras­er Uni­ver­si­ty com­plet­ing my Bach­e­lor of Arts degree in Geog­ra­phy and Psy­chol­o­gy, then through the Uni­ver­si­ty of British Colum­bia com­plet­ing my Bach­e­lor of Edu­ca­tion Teach­ing degree.

I began my TTOC teach­ing career in Ver­non, BC. How­ev­er, after 4 years I need­ed a change in my life so I embarked on a new adven­ture in Culi­a­can, Mex­i­co where a friend and I cre­at­ed our own Eng­lish lan­guage school and Sum­mer camp. 

After a year in par­adise, I relo­cat­ed here in Fort St John into my dream teach­ing posi­tion. For 18 years now I have been pri­mar­i­ly a Wood­shop Teacher, but have also taught Eng­lish, Math, Com­put­ers, Draft­ing, Entre­pre­neur­ship, and Year­book.

Through this diverse teach­ing career I have explored and devel­oped many avenues of my edu­ca­tion­al ped­a­gogy as each of these cours­es entails a dif­fer­ent approach to learn­ing design.

I always aim my les­son designs and class­room expe­ri­ences to engage my stu­dents in a pos­i­tive learn­ing envi­ron­ment. I uti­lize Uni­ver­sal Designs for Learn­ing prac­tices with­in near­ly every les­son while using a mix­ture of hands-on, ver­bal and writ­ten instruc­tions to fur­ther engage all learn­ers with their unique learn­ing styles. 

My approach to design­ing a pos­i­tive learn­ing expe­ri­ence is also a bal­ance between the obvi­ous pro­fes­sion­al­ism we must bring to the class­room envi­ron­ment and the human aspect of mak­ing those impor­tant con­nec­tions with my stu­dents. At any moment my class­room envi­ron­ment can change from a pin-drop­ping silence of engage­ment in instruc­tion to a full-out laugh­ter from my nev­er-end­ing sense of humour. I tru­ly believe they are laugh­ing with me and not at me. Either way, there is always laugh­ter involved and every­one feels safe and that they belong in this envi­ron­ment.

I am in this Mas­ters Pro­gram to fur­ther explore learn­ing designs but with­in a more tech­no­log­i­cal frame­work. I want to bring updat­ed tech­nol­o­gy to the fore­front of my cours­es by con­vert­ing all of my hand­outs into Google Class­room docs, updat­ing pic­tures of tools and machin­ery from stock illus­tra­tions to our actu­al tools and machines, chang­ing pen­cil on paper tests into inter­ac­tive, self-assess­ing Google Forms, and per­haps even cre­at­ing videos to accom­pa­ny my demon­stra­tions so stu­dents can access any of these through a new Google Class­room envi­ron­ment.

Addi­tion­al­ly, I would like to take this struc­ture to a broad­er audi­ence and include all of our dis­trict Tech Ed / ADST teach­ers in the oppor­tu­ni­ty to upload their sim­i­lar con­tent to a dis­trict-wide web­site to share among all of us and our stu­dents.

Ambi­tious, yes. Real­is­tic, I will keep you post­ed.

Thank you.