This week in class we specifically focused on unpacking digital tools and learning how to best incorporate them into our classroom. We took the time to explore several digital tools and discussed various ways we could use the tools to accomplish educational goals. We continued to talk about the importance of using multimodal tools and how it is crucial to incorporate different mediums when delivering information. For example, we talked about how one of the reasons that IKEA became so popular was due to the simplicity and efficiency of their instructional manuals for assembling the furniture. The manuals include very simple and basic diagrams that are easy to follow, straightforward, and clearly depict how to assemble the pieces making them extremely user friendly.
We discussed how images add more dimension and more opportunity to reference the material and how it corresponds to our actual lives. Furthermore, I found our discussion surrounding what makes an image decorative, seductive, and instructive to be very interesting and was surprised to learn that seductive images are not as great as they seem. Seductive images are images that look great at a first glance but are not actually as useful or beneficial as they appear to be. Such images actually distract the viewer as they are usually visually very cluttered and are hard to contextualize. I learned that instructional or informative images are the most valuable as they make it clear for the student to focus on the most important aspect and are usually clearly defined and simple. I also enjoyed how we talked about PowerPoint, as I got to admit, it’s definitely an underrated tool and would be super valuable in a classroom. Many software programs for animation and videos are very expensive and take a great deal of time to learn how to use, and PowerPoint is a great alternative. PowerPoint is simple but effective and there are a lot of things you can do with PowerPoint, like animation and customizing slides, that I was not aware of. I can say with confidence that I will for sure be using PowerPoint in my lesson plans.