Stress is an experience that I have come to loathe as I grow into my adult years, and I find myself wishing I had practiced stress management techniques sooner. When discussing this topic with my lovely partners for this course’s major group project, we found that we all felt the same way. Therefore, we decided to focus on teaching the topic of stress to intermediary-aged children for our interactive learning resource. For this blog post, I will be discussing a video that came up when I searched “stress management techniques for kids” on the Youtube search engine. Moreover, I will discuss how the video could fit into our interactive learning resource.

This video is designed in a cartoon-like style, which I find will keep students engaged in learning the material. Also, the video utilizes plain language, simple definitions, reflective questions, and examples which can enhance learner-generated interaction. Learner-generated interaction refers to media that does not have explicit interaction built in, but rather the interpretation of the material is left to the learner (Bates, 2019). If the video required the students to actively respond to the video material then it would be referred to as inherent activity (Bates, 2019). In order to make this video more interactive, I would suggest that the students write down their own examples for each of the tips (focus on the things you can control, manage your time, take care of your body, use positive self-talk, talk to a friend/adult). This activity would help encourage further reflection and enhance the quality of the interaction with the video. After the students are done writing their answers on a piece of paper, they can hand it in to receive feedback. This short activity would not take too much time or effort and is very worthwhile as it is so important that kids learn and apply stress management techniques to their own lives. In order to design this activity for inclusion, I would ensure that the subtitles are written throughout the video, and provide a printed copy of the transcript in case the students wanted to review the material.

References

Bates, A.W. (2019). Teaching in a Digital Age – Second Edition. Vancouver, B.C. Tony Bates Associates Ltd. Retrieved from https://pressbooks.bccampus.ca/teachinginadigitalagev2/