Matt’s Notes
It’s hard to believe we’re almost a full month into 2024! And while the calendar suggests we’ve just a couple of months of winter left, these are the months that drag ceaselessly… for all the days flying past…
On this episode we are taking a deep dive into one of my favorite “tech” pieces of “ed tech”… namely, H5P! I predict we will be coming back to this in future episodes… you could say we are fans! Please click below as suits your interest!
Here’s hoping the audio is leastways as OK as the video!! #ednontech
The Passenger (Cormac McCarthy)
I am going through a Cormac McCarthy period in my life.
It happens. It’s happened before… when my first son was born… it’s happening now… it’ll happen again. So long as I am a conscious entity with an interest in words or ideas. His writing is foundational to my worldview, it’s no exaggeration to say… and I feel like many, many others out there would readily attest the same.
His voice becomes part of the voice that narrates the story of your own life to yourself. A pretty neat trick!
I burned through his Stella Marris, the companion novel published at the same time, in three or four days. The Passenger, as a complementary experience, is requiring shorter periods of reading from me… I have had to put the book down many times to laugh deeply and loudly… a relatively unprecedented thing for me when reading novels… furthermore it has deep dives on the history and nature of contemporary physics and mathematics… as well as dead cold pulp detective elements… and metaphysical musings and meanderings the like of which only that singular and now eternally resting American novelist was capable of, uniquely…
This is a man who, writing these novels in his eighties, had to know these would likely be his last published works. For a writer who made living-with-death part of his narrative universe from the get-go. Consider the prominence of a not-altogether-altruistic and not-altogether-real presence named The Kid in Stella Maris and the Passenger. Now think to his un-protagonist of the same name from Blood Meridian. And this is only one of likely many, many other points of overlap both direct and indirect betwixt and between the matrices of a literary career of some SIX DECADES… we are one year shy of sixty years from the publication of his first novel The Orchard Keeper…. consider how much the world has changed… and so, as with all Cormac’s works, The Passenger will never be, to be sure, the same novel for the same two readers or for the same reader read twice…
If you’ve time or interest, the profiles on the Santa Fe institute… where Cormac spent some 39 years in various capacities… are as enlightening as anything you’ll find on the internet… with the possible exception of his Oprah interview in 2008…
Harrowed (a screenplay)
Sometimes I’ll reach out to people on a Friday or Saturday.
Lots of the people I’m friends with on Facebook are really smart and creative. And so I’ve been known to reach out via direct messages to see what people’s interests are… what they might be working on outside the gaze of social media…
I’ve known Aaron since we took the bus from Southwood/Dunn’s Crossing/Skyline to Albert Street Junior High, and then to Fredericton High. You know when people are sympathetic & cool. You see them around. You’re not part of each other’s lives, but you’re part of the same scene. It was that kind of thing.
Enter the ZuckerSuck effect: wherein all past contacts from past years almost without exception grind past acquaintanceships into a shared, Meta-mediated, liminal sort of reality for some decade-and-a-half… I can trace my first use of the ZuckerSuck to Christmas of 2006 wherein myself and my kids’ mom were living in Seoul, South Korea and I was still in my first year of teaching… and this was before the kids arrived…
ANYWAY! Aaron was kind enough to share his horror script with me! And I’m hoping somehow to parlay that into a collaboration… cause the narrative literary arts are very dear to my heart… and I feel like checking out friends’ works can be a kick starter to certain kinds of creativity!
Aaron has disclosed that I can share of his online writerly presence! I am looking forward to collaborating with him relatively soon!
Tears at the Heart of Things (doctoral thesis)
Moral Distress Among Principals of Canadian-Accredited Schools in China
Lee Smith and his partner Deanna showed up at Heritage Institute of Language Arts in northwest Seoul, South Korea during my year of teaching and boy did they help pull me out of a funk! I was very unsure of myself as a teacher, to the point of being certain that I would be fired and sent home in ignominy… which anxiousness persisted for a great many months… and which anxieties have, in turn, returned from time to time… which I recognize now as being a healthy response within a larger context of personal and professional growth…
ANYWAY!
Due to the aforementioned ZuckerSuck effect, we remain in touch! Some 17+ years later… and through such social machinations and intercommunications & so forth, it’s been my privilege to watch Lee chug down the infernal stretch towards doctordom! And, as he has now successfully defended his thesis, I am deeply pleased to announce that Dr. Smith will be joining Doug & myself on the next episode of the EnT!
While Lee’s thesis is not yet publicly available, you can be sure that we will be providing any links or other bibliographic data if/when such are available!
A Veritable Cavalcade of H5P (A Banker’s Dozen)
It would feel wrong to leave the first H5P episode without looking back on some of the H5P that’s accumulated throughout the past year-and-a-half… consider this a small flavor… and, whilst I made an allusion to an H5P interaction ABOUT H5P INTERACTIONS… that will be a trick for another episode… reasons being these notes are the only thing holding up releasing the episode for public consumption right now… and the last hundred and fifty pages of Cormac’s The Passenger are calling out to me… so… without further ado… our FIRST ELEVEN #ednontech H5P!!
Doug’s Notes
Tool Investigation: H5P ( Interactive Learning Objects)
H5P is a free and open-source content collaboration framework based on JavaScript.
H5P is an abbreviation for HTML5 Package, and aims to make it easy for everyone to create, share and reuse interactive HTML5 content.
Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H5P
H5P makes it easy to create, share and reuse HTML5 content and applications. H5P empowers everyone to create rich and interactive web experiences more efficiently.
Macromedia Flash started its life back in 1997 as a simple onscreen animation package called FutureSplash.
In summary, Flash offers e-learning developers many possibilities for producing a whole range of LO [Learning Objects]. These can be broadly summarised as:
- Intelligent formative assessment exercises (directing learning back to content the viewer still needs to learn).
- Interactive presentations
- Animations of complex subject processes
- Case studies based on live data
- Role-playing games and exercises
- Interactive simulations
- Synchronous and asynchronous workshops
- Access and navigation of content based on learning styles preferences
- Peer-to-peer chat and data sharing
Hammerton, M. (2005). To Flash or not to Flash: the use of Macromedia Flash as an effective tool for the production of learning objects in higher education. The Science Learning and Teaching Conference 2005 (p. 161).
Empowered with interactive multimedia presentation capabilities, handheld technology permits the delivery of a range of digital material such as video, audio, graphics and integrated media. If appropriately designed for the context, educationally useful interactive multimedia digital material like learning objects can be effectively delivered to students at anytime, inside and outside of classrooms.
Churchill, D., & Hedberg, J. (2008). Learning object design considerations for small-screen handheld devices. Computers & Education, 50(3), 881-893.
Active learning is a popular and proven method used in contemporary educational design and practice.
Singleton, R., & Charlton, A. (2020). Creating H5P content for active learning. Pacific Journal of Technology Enhanced Learning, 2(1), 13-14.
By using media in the teaching and learning process, the teacher will be equipped with “gears” to engage students in the learning process.
Wicaksono, J. A., Setiarini, R. B., Ikeda, O., & Novawan, A. (2021, January). The use of H5P in teaching English. In The First International Conference on Social Science, Humanity, and Public Health (ICOSHIP 2020) (pp. 227-230). Atlantis Press.
H5P has examples of at least 54 different types of activities
https://h5p.org/content-types-and-applications
Word of the Podcast
H5P
Phrase of the Podcast
Uncovering things we’ve already spoken to!
Question of the Podcast
Since we know that interactive learning objects help students, what can we do to get more educators to use them more often?
Thanks for joining us!! We are gladdened and grateful! Until next time, we hope…
Podcast: Play in new window | Download