Written by the Instructional Design Team
Ever feel like students tune you out? Remember the teacher in Ferris Bueller’s Day off (“anyone? anyone?”)? Some of our faculty are using a free app called, Tellagami, to grab students’ attention. Below is one from Diana Taylor, who uses it in COMP 356 to introduce the upcoming week.
https://tellagami.com/gami/JSSLW1/
You can use any picture as background. This allows you to take a picture from the front of your class, or anywhere, and use as the backdrop for your video. Or, include a picture of the concept you are presenting for the week. Here are some quick ideas you might try (from Free Tech for Teachers blog by Richard Byrne and the Adams Center Instructional Design Team):
- Have a character tell a story
- Take a trip back in time
- Pick a person in history and have them introduce themselves
- Have students post a “Gami” to a discussion forum. The background picture can represent a visual and the audio can address another part of an assignment.
- Have a student summarize the first week of class using a Gami (credit to Houston Heflin for this idea)
- Use a plant cell as the background and have the avatar name and discuss the cell function
- Start the week with a scripture reading and use various backgrounds that it may be applied to
- Present a dilemma to be resolved or introduce a case study
These mini-video (gamis) are easy to post to social media, email, or embed in OpenClass. The maximum recording time is 30 seconds. Tellagami can be integrated into other apps like Explain Everything and iMovie.
Here is an example of how you can use Tellagami to start a class or training session:
https://tellagami.com/gami/J202YP/
Thank you to Diana Taylor, Dr. Houston Heflin, and Richard Byrne for their contributions to this post!