Quick Overview

Audience:          K-5 students learning or reviewing Open/Closed Syllables, Orton Gillingham Educators, Professional Development

Responsibilities:  Visual Design,  Instructional Learning Animation 

Tools Used in Development:    Camtasia, LogicPro, Canva, Google Slides

Process & Skills Demonstrated:   

I merged option three and four into one instructional animation video that is just under 5 minutes long. The instructional animation’s purpose is to create a visual representation and explanation for a very difficult concept to teach to young readers, open and closed syllables. According to Core Phonics, “Open and closed syllables make up almost 75 percent of syllables in English Words” (Standback 1992). This animation was designed for educators, parents and Orton Gillingham tutors. It could be used at home or in classrooms as a way to introduce this concept.  It is accessible through YouTube.

I started my rough draft in Google Slides by duplicating the house slides and alternating the open and closed doors. I used several tools to create this animation to assist in visualizing and explaining an important process in my teaching and training discipline.  Additionally, storytelling was used to engage a younger audience with the help of the characters Silly and Bull.

My design sequence went through several edits to simplify the graphics and create a very concise story to explain the concept without overloading the learner.  The Coherence Principle guided my choice in backgrounds that were simple but meaningful. For example, the Closed Syllable Short Vowel House has a green roof to match the green box used around the Short Vowel Sound/Spelling Cards. The Open Syllable House has a yellow roof top to match the long vowel Sound/Spelling cards that are yellow. The graphics and text used were all supportive of the learning goals. The Signaling Principle was used to direct the learners eyes to emphasize key parts of the word when the vowel is long or short.  I did choose to use graphics and text on the screen while narrating in certain parts of the animation. While this contradicts the Redundancy Principle, I felt it was important because of the content matter. Voice overs were timed appropriately to align with Mayer’s Temporal Contiguity Principle. I also used the Modality Principle by engaging visual and auditory channels by using animated visuals with voiceovers. 

Production tools that were used in this animation were:

• Google Slides initially served as my rough draft template to create the slide-by-slide house for CVC and CV words with a door that open/closed. Then, I realized I could make a more child-friendly animation of the houses in Canva. I first used tweening in Google Slides to open/close the door. 

• Canva was used to build the characters, the house templates and some of the background animation in the final production. Canva also enabled me to add assigned behaviors to individual objects (such as Bull’s arm or Silly’s arm that waves). I also used some tweening to create the an animated stop-motion for some of the slides where Bull closes his arms (and the door). 

• Camtasia was used to string together all of the pieces and also enabled me to add myself into the video as the narrator and to show important multisensory  visual cues for the short vowel sounds.

• Logic Pro was used to find additional audio assets such as:

  •  Cartoon characters' audio assets: laugh sound, “oooooooo” sound and “what” audio asset that Silly and Bull say in the product.

  • Go Love Teach Intro and Outro music