E Learning

During the course of the immersion task, Bruce and I put together a digital story called A Teacher’s Fairytale. We have put it onto youtube to make it easier to access.

We see digital stories as an excellent way of approaching a number of classroom topics with students. For example, digital stories can learn about film techniques such as camera shots and editing, and how these form meaning. Students can also experiment with stylistic techniques such as transitions between shots, which they may not have been conscious of before when viewing film. According to Shewbridge and Berge (2004), there is a positive link between the production of digital stories and students becoming more critically reflective when analyising films. It seems that students who produce their own films have a greater grasp of how meaning is formed and are more aware of the production elemnts of film.

Shewbridge, W. & Berge, Z. (2004). The role of theory and technology in learning video production: the challenge of change. International Journal on E-Learning 391), (Jan-March 2004), 31-40.

Benefits of Podcasting

The great thing about podcasts is that it makes information more widely available. Teachers often cannot use resources because their the text is too difficult for their students. The only other option the teacher has is to rewrite the information themselves. When information is presented in the form of a podcast however it means that all students, regardless of their reading level, have equal access to the information.

One website that makes use of podcasts is Writers Talk, a site set up by the center for learning innovation. The site includes twelve interviews with various authors. By presenting the interviews in podcast format, the whole experience s more interesting and more realistic than reading a script of the interview.

I have also found a commentry from ABC radio on the use of podcasts in the classroom. The main idea from the podcast was that when students are told they will be able to make a podcast of their poetry they become excited and more engaged. The idea of publishing engaging students links to the way that digital storytelling improves student motivation.

I found an article called Digital video goes to school, which looks at the use of the humble camcorder in the classroom and ways that digital videos may be applied to the class setting. The article outlined a significant point that I would like to address. Creating a digital story of learning, ideas or events can help to bring a community together. Students can publish their ideas and learning and have their peers, parents and other community members view and acknowledge their achievements. It also opens up the possibility of publishing to a potentially global audience on the internet although this may cause other difficulties.

Publishing a digital story would give students the experience of creating a text for a particular audience and context. It would also be likely to motivate students to invest a lot of effort into the tasks as they would know that what they created was to be put on show.

Reference: Hoffenberg, H., & Handler, M. (2001). Digital video goes to school. Learning & Leading with Technology, 29(2), 10-15.

I have just read a really interesting commentry on digital storytelling. It focused on the importance of having an emotive story to tell and the fact that students can apply their personal experiences to digital storytelling to make it more meaningful. It also underlines the way that students personal experiences can be a gateway into looking at larger social issues.

It seems that students are likely to find creating digital stories both challenging and rewarding. The planning, production and editing process of creating a digital story appears to be quite time consuming. Yet students are likely to learn a great deal about both the technologies they are use and how meaning is formed and manipulated, and how combining text types can alter meaning. Digital stories also provide a multi sensory experience that is rarely found in other learning formats.  Often digital stories mix visuals, written text and music.

Interestingly the commentry also focused on the importance of planning a digital story. Before students can create they must plan out their stories and how they will create them. I think perhaps comic life mentioned in my last blog would be a good start for the digital storytelling process.

Paul mentioned that comics were a great way to engage and motivate students as well as helping to simplify complicated concepts that students may initially struggle to understand. I began thinking about programs like comic life that allow students to create storyboards using both images and text. Comic strips such as these are actually a type of digital storytelling that can be used in the classroom to enhance students learning and understanding. It also allows students to be creative and innovative.

Below is an example of comic life that some humanities students created. They used manga and applyed it to their own comic strips. It is also possible to use digital photos that the students have taken themselves to create these comic strips.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/7661190@N05/497724831/

Allowing students to apply knowledge to these types of programs can bring alive a subject for a student. It could also be used as a tool by students planning to create their own films or documentries. For instance, before allowing students to film, a teacher might have students storyboard their ideas using digital pictures and texts explaining what would be happening in that scene.

I have been reading an article called the Emerging online life of the digital native. The article focuses on aspects of life that have been changed by digital technologies such as communication, sharing information, creating and gaming. It also talks about how online life for many teenagers is  becoming more than just a source of information, it is becoming a lifestyle choice. One aspect i haven’t thought about before is coordination. Students often need to coordinate meeting online when using online games. While these games in themselves may appear to have little educational value, the organisation needed to get several players online at the same time is a skill in itself. A more useful change for the English classroom is that many online programs make use of evaluation and show numerous different perspectives. For instance individuals on ebay are rated on their honesty in transactions and forums and blogs discuss varing points of view and personal evaluations on a massive range of topics. Both of these give valid examples to explain to students the need for evaluation, how it works and how it is used beyond the classroom.

Another interesting point mentioned was that often digital natives and digital immigrants use the same technologies in different ways. Digital technologies for example give a wealth of new examples and models of explanation that many students will find informative.

Prensky, M. (2004). The emerging online life of the digital native: What they do differently because of technology and how they do it.

Libby’s post on Wikipedia and Google pointed out the issues with students using these sources to plagerise and  use ‘cut and paste’ methods when completeing school assessments. Many students want to take the easy way out of assessments if it is possible. It shows the importance of teaching students how to use these programs properly and making students aware of issues of authorship. Students also need to be taught how to use these reserch tools effectively, which includes teaching students how to reference websites and e-journals and why referencing is so important. Often students do not think about the ethics beind plagerism and it is becoming increasingly impritant that teachers explain these aspects to their students. As information becomes increasingly easy to access, students need to be taught how to use the information to aid their learning.

The Gears of my childhood looks at how new information may be assimilated into old knowledge and into a model of something that the individual finds particularly interesting. The idea behind this article is that possibly the computer could provide the motivating model, which knowledge might be assimilated with. i think this is an interesting idea, but also that it is limited. We live in a society surrounded by technology and the youth of today is obviously firmly embedded in these new technologies. Many students do spend a lot of time engaging with digital technologies. However some do not. We should not assume that the experience of some or even of the majority is the experience of all. I feel that this is what this article is leaning towards and I believe it is a dangerous mistake to make.

The article does give a valid reminder about how subjects that interest students can dictate their learning. It also emphasises the importance of including learning activities that allow student choice and possibly allows students to focus on their interests in the classroom. These strategies not only promote student centred learning but also help students to be more motivated and engaged.

Constructionism, Learning by design and project based learning looks had strategies that might be used in the classroom to improve students understanding application and evaluation of learned material. Most of the ideas in the article revolve around collaboration, reflection and student choice. These ideas are commonly associated with both an improvement in learning and also with increasing student engagement.

One point mentioned however was that activities could occur in multiple settings. This particular point interested me as it associates with ideas that learning information in a setting makes it easier to regurgitate that information in the setting in which it was learned. It makes sense that if students are able to carry out activities in multiple contexts that their learning will generalise over into new situations and contexts more easily.

Being able to teach information that generalises more easily is important as students should be able to use the information they learn outside the classroom as well as inside it.

The article K-12 on the Internet looks at how the internet can be used most effectively in a classroom setting. The article begins with a generalisation about the isolation of the classroom claiming a little that the internet is the only connection students have to the outside world. I believe this is a bit too simplistic. However I do agree that the internet quickens the access  to many parts of the outside world which are more difficult to reach through other sources due to time and resource constraints.

The article also touches upon some major difficulties with using the internet in the classroom. For instance often students will return too many hits when using serch engines. For me this stresses the importance of ensuring students have a sound basic knowledge in the programs they use before they sit down at the computer. Mind mapping issues like ‘How to use a search engine’ as a class  before using the computers. It all comes back to maintaining a firm learning structure. Of course it may be possible to find an informative podcast that the students can listen to before they use the new program. Another possibility is to allow students to work in pairs while they learn to negotiate the new program. Informing students of how to use tecnology should not be restricted by traditional learning methods. Obviously older students are likely to know about the programs used in class but it is still worth while to check students understanding before they sit down at the computer.

Reference: Soloway, E. et al. (2000). Log on education: K-12 and the Internet. Communications f the ACM 43(1), 19-25.