Month: October 2022

Merrill’s First Principles

Merrill shows five principle which promote learning

1 The learning should be relate to real world problems

2 Existing knowledge is activate as a foundation of new knowledge

3 Course must be demonstrate through both visually or storytelling

4 Allowing them to apply new information

5 New knowledge is applied to learner’s world.

When I took the Economic history class. We had a group project of presentations. I have experience with sharing real-world problems from an economic perspective. I searched cost of conflict, especially with Sudan. Sudan has experienced a civil war due to ethnic conflict. I demonstrated how much the actual damage and the average salary have dropped.

　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　

GDP per capita in Sudan

The massive decline in GDP per capita showed when there is a huge conflict and massacre in 1991. This means the annual salary has been dropped from $1668 to $320. When there is War, there is the destruction of the firm and infrastructures.

1. real-world problems

2. I applied into economic perspective with existing knowledge

3.There is a story behind the civil wars I showed them with presentations

I found this is more engaging and it is easier to stick to brains.

Reference

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:South_Sudan_022.jpg

https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/SDN/sudan/gdp-per-capita#:~:text=Sudan%20gdp%20per%20capita%20for,a%2024.19%25%20increase%20from%202020.

Poor presentation slides

I am going to review the PowerPoint slides I had in the past. I made this PowerPoint slide when I was taking an Environmental Economics course. I was discussing Hazardous waste which hurts the environment. I listed the types of hazardous waste in this slide.

• I found the title is missing in these slides.
• The sides of the letter are the same.
• The color does not match the content of the slide.
• There is not enough room for each bullet point.

I could use the color contrast scheme to be more engaging. The green color does not give the harm or damage impacts.

So I tried a little change here by following scheme. I changed color.

The yellow color gives a more warning or threatening impression and it matches the image. I also made the text red which I think is important. It gives more clear information and is easier to understand. I tried not to use too many colors just yellow, red, and black.

I made enough space on each bullet point to make it clear.

The common bad PowerPoint has too much text and the color does not fit the content.

(Text to speech tools)

When I am thinking text to speech tools, I remembered I tried to use an Audiobook. I signed up for the audible free trials. At first, I thought it is a convenient way to absorb information while I cannot use both hands. However, it turned out that I did not remember at all after I listened and it requires a lot of concentration, making me tired. I realized I am good at absorbing information by watching rather than listening. Nevertheless, it gives more opportunities to access books who have a disability. I think the demand for audiobook will grow as people become busier and cannot concentrate on reading books. Some people want to access books while they are walking or riding trains.

Information gathering through books is also diversifying and being replaced by digital and audiobooks. I use physical books and digital book. While I am in Canada, it is difficult to access Japanese books and Manga so I use kindle tablet. It helps to save the shipping cost and I do not have to carry heavy books.

Moreover, there is a useful tool called “word-wise” to read books in English. The Word Wise explains the difficult word by giving short definitions. I used to avoid reading books in English because I get annoyed every time I encountered words that I do not know. It takes time to look it up in the dictionary but this Word Wise tool can save time to look it up.