The Instructional Need
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My analysis and research during the LDT200X signature assignment, identified a need and desire for resources to build parents' knowledge and confidence to support their child in learning phonics. A learning goal was identified for the development of the resource.
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Learning Goal:
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To prepare parents and carers to confidently support their child’s learning in phonics.
This Instruction will enable learners to:
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Understand phonics as the process of hearing the smallest units of sound in words (phonemes) and encoding/decoding these sounds to and from text (using graphemes).
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Gain knowledge of Key Vocabulary: Phonics, phoneme, grapheme, digraph, trigraph.
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Apply this knowledge to create fun games and activities that promote their child’s development of phonics skills.
The Instructional Strategy
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An instructional design strategy was developed, matching parent's desire for an online, smartphone accessible, interactive resource. The full design outline of the course can be viewed in pdf by clicking the icon. The sections highlighted in yellow correspond the the media developed for submission in this assignment.
Design of Instructional Strategy
Media Selection and Rationale
Original Infographic
In order to further develop the concept of phoneme grapheme pairs presented in the video, an additional reading was developed in the form of an infographic. Displaying a lot of information (44 phonemes their complex relationships) in one place was a design challenge. In my research, I did not come accross anywhere where this infomation was concisely displayed using design principles so I developed the infographic using the elements of position and colour to chunk the information. I used the size of each bubble to denote the relative complexity of learning to spell each phoneme. I used a clear white background and avoided extraneous graphics to keep congitive load to a minimum. I cited sources for the spelling and grouping of the phonemes.
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Original Digital video
The video was created to introduce the term grapheme and to explain how phoneme grapheme pairs are learnt and why. I chose to use Powtoon for my video because the clean look and the ability to blend graphics, animation and voice over fitted my checklist for multi channel learning in asset development. I also created closed captioning making the resource more accessible.
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Original Digital Images
The original images I created represent Elsie and Nik in the simulation where parents practise putting their phonics skills into use by supporting a child with their learning. Using graphics in this way can boost learner engagement and activity and brings the branching scenario to life. I wanted the characters to appeal to as wide a range of parents and carers as possible and to make them friendly and inviting so as to encourage learners to consider their needs in their decisions during the branching scenario. I made the graphics as PNGs, allowing me to supeimpose them on a variet of backgrounds more naturally than Jpegs. The file size and compression was chosen to fit with the upload constraints of the isEasy platform. I found that many criteria on my Digital Media Checklist were redundant for these graphics as they are not learning content specific.
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Digital Media Checklist for Images
Open Educational Resources (OER)
The first OER I identified was a Creative Commons Licensed collection of activities for sounding out words. Although I did not like everything about this resource, I was able to extract parts of the resource , because of the terms of the licence allow this.
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Sounding Out activities by Holt, Lawrence et al (2006), sourced from https://www.oercommons.org/courses/sounding-out-activities
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Digital Media Checklist for OER1
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The second OER I selected was a Creative Commons Licensed video clip, showing an early years teacher using phonics games. I thought this resource added an extra dimension to my course. Seeing the skills put into action in a real world setting is a valuable learning experience. This is an example where OER is invaluable as rules relating to sharing images of children in education mean that it is often difficult to self produce relevant examples for sharing.
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Engaging in Phonics Games in Kindergarten by Queensland Curriculum and Assessment Authority (2018), sources from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWIF6mcmhZI
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Digital Media Checklist for OER2
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Overall, I found it quite difficult to find OER that met the requirements of my checklist for this topic. Perhaps because the intended audience is parents and carers and there is not so much educational content produced under creative commons and free licences for this audience.
Interactive adaptive module
The media above were integrated into an interactive module that I have begun to develop using the isEazy content authoring platform. Although the module is not yet complete, I have focused on the sections, highlighted in the Design of Instructional Strategy document above, which showcase the implementation of the tools and media for this assignment. Using the interactive capabilities of this platform, I developed an interactive games library, two quizzes and a branching scenario. Where sections of the content are still under development, I have included storyboard extracts and media assets to convey the eventual content.
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