2021 – A Review of Video Content in Numbers
It’s almost impossible today to open our social media pages, or view a newspaper article, read a report, or take a course without encountering short-form video content. It is an ideal medium for passing a lot of information quickly and succinctly and it allows us to decide whether we want to deep-dive a particular post, an article, or a subject area in more detail.Read More
Taking Control Of Your Professional Development
I love professional development. But I don’t like professional development that is imposed on me that really has no relevance to what I’m doing or it’s something that I already know. When I first started teaching, professional development was face to face, and usually not something I chose to do. Fortunately, I worked at a pretty progressive school and much of the professional development was helping us raise the bar and narrow the gap.Read More
Does Animation Enhance Learning?
Is animation more than just an engagement tool, and can it enhance learning? In my first podcast, Can Instructional Videos Make Your Smarter? I looked at whether we can design videos to be more cognitively efficient. In this episode I look at some of the research around animation, and whether it can be used to enhance learning.Read More
Can Instructional Videos Make You Smarter?
Can Instructional Videos Make you Smarter? is the title of episode 1 of my new podcast. It’s a series that makes educational research practical and accessible. Video is such a powerful learning tool. It has the power to motivate, engage and aid learning and retention. But most educators don’t use it to its full potential. I want to help them do so.Read More
What Are The Top Tools For Learning in 2021?
Each year an important list is compiled which thoroughly analyses all the tools that are currently being used across sectors of education – from early school years through to professional development.Read More
We’re Building An Online Makematic Community
So we’ve decided to build a Community! A community of educators and education professionals who are interested in improving their use of multimedia in the classroom. We have a lot of expertise in this area and we want to share that expertise with you!Read More
Is Your Child At The Centre of Their Education – Part Four
My previous blogs in this series have examined the impact child-centred education has had in education since its beginning with John Dewey in the 19th Century. Since then, it has rapidly progressed as a central pillar in any good education system. Moves in the UK and USA in the mid-late 20th century ensured that children were treated as individuals in schools. The introduction and then widespread adoption of educational technology in the latter 20th and early 21st century meant that child-centred education has now been fully enabled and we’ve reached a point where sophisticated AI-enabled platforms, such as Squirrel, plan learning pathways exactly suited for every student as an individual. Check out part 1, part 2, and part 3 of this series. Read More
Employee Spotlight: Melissa Hodder, Project Manager
Have you ever wondered what goes on behind the scenes when we create our videos? This month, we spoke to Project Manager, Melissa Hodder, who’s only been at Makematic for 8 months but has immensely helped and supported the Production team in all of their projects.Read More
The Untold Pitch Competition Winners
As you know, we’ve been running an Untold Pitch Competition with a group of students from California. If you don’t know about it, we suggest catching up on this blog to see all the entries and what the Pitch Competition is all about.
We had over 40 entries, to begin with, and we managed to cut it down to 12 shortlisted entries. It was tough bringing it down to 12, but even tougher to select 5 winners. In order to decide the winners, a 50/50 voting process was implemented. 50% of the vote was through social media. The other 50% was by the Pitch competition judges.
Thanks to this it made our jobs a whole lot easier to announce the winners.Read More
The Pitch Competition: Meet The Judges
Over the past six months, we have been reaching out to students, asking them to develop their own videos on the moments in history that mean the most to them. The judging of these submissions is two-fold – public vote and expert judging panel.Read More