Shawn A. Shepard
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communication

Communicate clearly to achieve professional goals using visual and verbal modes to explain and persuade.

Map Your Diatonic HarmonicaEDTEC 671: Learning Environment Design

Map Your Diatonic Harmonica with an Instrument Tuner Lesson (7MB PPTX)

My favorite musical instrument to play is the harmonica. I carry it in my pocket, pull it out and start playing when I want, and it's always fun to play.

For a long time, I was a little timid about playing; I didn't know many tunes and I wasn't sure if I was playing them correctly. I had hundreds of sheets of music, but didn't really understand how to translate them for the harmonica. All of that changed when I realized I could map out the notes on my harmonica with the same tuner I used to tune my guitar. It wasn't long before I could figure out any sheet of music and play it on my harmonica with confidence.

When I thought about sharing this with others, I realized it would be tough to communicate this information without being there. But, I thought by using a narrated PowerPoint for this EDTEC 671 assignment, carefully organized into small chunks with a logical flow, and with the right graphics, diagrams, and charts I could pull it off.

The narration, organization, and flow work well enough, especially the quiz sections that I used to verify that the learner understood what I was trying to explain before they went on to the next chunk. The charts, tables, and diagrams seem to work ok, but a little extra narration probably would have helped.  It’s the graphics that fall short.

The picture of a web cam was a poor choice to illustrate that the learner needed a good microphone. The web cam has a microphone, and most people know that, but it could be confusing for some.

There are many types of harmonica, each with a different note layout. But, the lesson was only appropriate for a standard, C diatonic. It was critical to make sure the learner had the correct type and the lesson spends a lot of time to explain that. But the pictures of the harmonicas are not to scale, which at best means an important piece of information wasn’t communicated, and at worse, led to some confusion.

Similarly, the graphics that illustrate how to hold the harmonica fall short because they don’t show enough detail. The critical bit of information, that the numbers must be on top facing you, is explained in the narration, but it’s too difficult to see the numbers in the graphics.

And finally, the instructions for blowing and drawing air through the harmonica really need some kind of graphics. The words alone, even with narration are not enough.