Lumi is a brand new resource to me and I found it quite interesting and fun to play around with. My initial thoughts of Lumi were… what is this? How do you use this? And wow… This is a bit overwhelming. After playing around with it for a bit I had several aha moments and thought wow this is neat! How I wish I knew of this resource during COVID times when I was making all assignments interactive. Making interactive Google Slides is certainly not as user-friendly as Lumi. After watching the video tutorial from Katia my understanding of Lumi was reinforced even further and I began to feel confident in using it to create student assignments. Least to say, my first assignment that I created was a flop as I took a way more complicated approach to things in trying to make my entire module/ unit into one Lumi. This is definitely not the right approach for me.
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As I began to play around with Lumi more and more I decided that it would work best for me to use Lumi to make SOME (not all) of my lessons interactive and combined into one space. For my target audience, I know that if I used Lumi and similar formats for every lesson they would soon become unengaged and rather disinterested. Before watching Katia’s video I started by creating an interactive slides presentation. I used one of the lessons from my Grade 5 ELA Identity & Heritage Unit to create this Lumi lesson on the story “Names/Nombres” by Julia Alvarez. This lesson offers students a choice of reading the short story to themselves or listening to the YouTube version of the story. After listening to the story there is a link to participate in a Jamboard exercise where students have the opportunity to reflect and connect to the story. Students then complete the lesson by doing a quick five-question quiz in Lumi for assessment.
After listening to Katia’s tutorial video I then decided to create another Lumi lesson, but this time it would be an interactive video, as required for our assignment. I looked at my module and found a lesson where I was already using video content. From my grade 5 Identity & Heritage Unit I chose the lesson “When I was Eight” by Christy Jordan-Fenton and Margaret Pokiak-Fenton. Since I have chosen a blended format for my course prototype ideally I would read this story out loud to students for enjoyment first. However, that being said, I have designed this lesson so that if a student were to be absent they would not necessarily have to listen to the story for enjoyment first. In my experience, children of all ages love to be read to and even grade 5 students still enjoy picture books. After reading the story aloud to students, students would have the opportunity to use the Chromebooks to complete this Lumi lesson. Throughout this lesson, students would get to listen to the story again, however this time there are pauses throughout the video to allow for formative listening comprehension assessment. After answering the questions throughout, students will use the link at the end of the video to go to a Google Forms set of questions for formative assessment.
My reasoning for making these decisions is based on my specific target group of students. Rather than making all of my lessons on Lumi, I decided to create two Lumi lessons out of the eight that I have planned for my unit to present a range of instructional techniques. This technique, I feel, will bring greater diversity and a deeper connection with my students. I also choose to mix up my question types in my Lumi sessions so that students are interested and have other methods to express their understanding. I’ve included Google Forms and Jamboard activities in my lessons to help with idea reinforcement. This also provides me with numerous possibilities for evaluation. I may choose to use Lumi-embedded questions as formative evaluations and Google Forms or Jamboard assessments as summative assessments, or vice versa. This also allows me to switch between formative and summative evaluations based on student needs.
In conclusion, discovering and interacting with the resource Lumi was a very positive experience for me. I definitely can say that I was very unsure of the website from the start, however after discovering through experience and learning through Katia’s tutorial I have a changed mindset. Lumi is a great tool for easily make lessons interactive for online and blended learning. I can see myself using this website more and more in the future as one of my future professional development goals is to minimize student worksheets. My goal is to use Lumi more in the future to reduce the use of paper copy worksheets and provide digital interactive assignments.
How will you use Lumi in your future classroom?
Thanks for sharing your insights and experiences with Lumi Megan! I have had experience creating interactive videos using Edpuzzle, but after watching Katia’s video and doing some preliminary exploring of Lumi, I am really excited about the possibilities available!
I understand the excitement of wanting to create interactive activities for students for the entire unit. Sometimes, we think this is what students want and need, but also appreciate your process of realizing the need to sometimes be selective because the tools don’t always fit what we want students to do or even how they wish to learn. I actually had students request paper and pencil tasks last year because of technology overload. I think it all comes down to balance!
Thanks for sharing! Looking forward to seeing it all come together!
Megan you are not alone! I also thought that I needed to put my entire module into one Lumi! Haha. I really enjoy the way that you used Lumi for the read alouds. I can see potential for this application in our modified and alternative high school ELA classes and the analytics/immediate feedback question and answers will alleviate the headache of many missing paper comprehension questions. The only thing that I still need to play around with is the inclusion of higher order tasks/responses. I really don’t have any need for regurgitation of facts in the way that I hope to use it and for my target audience. However, I think that your solution to link to a Jamboard for reflection is brilliant and I will definitely be doing the same thing! Thank you for sharing your trials, errors, woes and successes!
Hi Megan, I totally agree that it can seem overwhelming at first! It takes time and effort to learn how to use new technology and honestly we don’t always have the time during the school year. I think that learning this new tool will give us the option to create different forms on online learning as I find I always tend to stick with the same thing.
To answer your question, not only do I see myself trying this in my small groups but I thought it might be fun to incorporate into whole groups lessons as well. For example you could make teams and have the teams answer the questions for points to keep them engaged in the video.
Oh yes!! I love the idea of using it in teams. My group that I’m teaching in the fall has some pretty competitive students so they would love this! I’m definitely using that idea! Thanks so much for sharing!
I LOVE this and I think your kids will too! I agree that students don’t always want all the bells and whistles. The year after Covid I had a lot of students asking if we could “just do a handout individually?” I was shocked. I was trying to incorporate all of this cool technology because we couldn’t do group work or face one another so I was trying to compensate and make school as fun and welcoming as possible. Turns out they missed just ‘regular school’ as they called it. They craved normalcy and it’s when I realized that just because we see kids/teens/adults using tech all the time and being glued to screens doesn’t mean they don’t want or need downtime. In fact, school might be where they get the most human interaction. Good for you for noticing this, Megan! I can’t wait to see the rest of your module! I know we both got carried away with all the cool elements!
Yes, I would agree! I good blend of all types of assignments definitely keeps students more engaged. They definitely get bored of the same old types of assignments.
Hi Megan!
I had the same initial thoughts that you did about Lumi – what is H5P? I also felt a bit overwhelmed with all the moving pieces of the class and to learn a new tool on top of it all. I was surprised at how use-friendly Lumi was and I actually enjoyed the process of creating a Lumi video. Jumping off of Tammy’s comment about students sometimes just want to have pencil and paper tasks or just read and complete questions – I, too, have had students request that! As educators, we want our students to be engaged and have fun learning, but not only is that not possible for the teacher, but students (maybe depending on grade level) also don’t always want interactive lessons where they have to share and discuss.
I appreciated the time you put into your interactive Lumi presentation and cannot wait to see your final product! Thank you for the ideas and sharing your thoughts.