And so, after a sun-kissed seven days in Sicily, it was time to head home. A nightmare return journey saw us almost miss our coach ride back to Portsmouth. I was grateful to get home, even if it was not until 2 am when I got there!
Looking across the “Valle del Bove”
As previously mentioned, the trip coincided with an extraordinarily busy time of year for me, so I was unable to work on the videos for a few weeks after returning home.
However, I am glad that I had done some prep work, renaming all the files on the day I shot them. This meant I could come into the editing cold, but get back into the process without too much difficulty.
Some of the resources I could make exactly as planned, such as the one from Aci Costello (as mentioned in Part 2).
Fig 1. The first resource I’d planned with the hotspots
My prior knowledge of H5P in this particular setting proved to be really useful. I was even able to add another feature as a bonus (see Fig 3.) because I managed to find some 360-degree views on Google Maps.
This really added to the immersiveness of the resource – students could feel as if they were actually there!
Fig 2. One of the hotspots has been clicked on, giving a narrated video for students to watch and a link to a Google 360 view
Some other resources required a change from our original plan. For example, we had organised one resource so that a student would have to make some decisions using the H5P Branching Scenario tool.
The idea was that the student would look at measures taken to manage certain rock formations and its impact on the local population, and come up with a recommendation for future action. But because of the nature of where we had to park the vans, it was impossible to get close enough to this particular site to get some close-up shots of the measures that had been taken. So, in the end, I created an animation from Google Earth.
It was almost as if it were a satellite view of our location before bringing up a still photo with a voiceover on top. See Fig 3 …
Fig 3. A draft version of a resource I made
Fig 4. An example of one of the Google 360 views I found of the location
Overall, I am happy with what I was able to produce for the department. I pushed myself both personally and professionally. I had never worked abroad before and I had never climbed an active volcano either! I hope this is the start of something new, something bigger and better, where I can go on these types of field trips more often. I believe that the “new normal” will see many more online interactivities. I can foresee an inclusive future in which students who might never have dreamed of studying practical courses, because of their own personal barriers, get a chance to do so through high-quality, engaging resources in an ABL approach.
Credit Images: All photos within this blog post were taken by Jonathan Bell
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