Digital Technologies 2
The 21st
century is causing many problems for schools around the world as they are unable
to keep up with the ever advancing and complexity of today’s technology. Being creative
goes beyond being able to write a good story or report, it includes the
interactive use of images and sound (A Global Imperative 2005). The digital tools that will be focused on and
explored this week include images, audio and videos. Providing these digital
tools to students from a young age (primary school) will build their knowledge,
allowing them to utilise more advanced technologies hence keeping up with the complexity
of new technologies coming onto the market.
Images: resizing and uploading digital photos
Ease of use and implications for learners
After experiences
some difficulties in the actual download of the MobaPhoto program the rest was
easy. Upon opening the program you are presented with four large icons to
select from. For this activity the ‘Batch photo resizer’ icon was selected. The
window allowed you to view and select the photos that you wished to have
resized. To resize the selected pictures it was as simple as clicking on the
button ‘Resize these pictures’. Finding the resizing activity so easy myself I believe
that students would be able to follow step by step instructions from a piece of
paper or their teacher once or twice before they become fluent at the activity.
For less than a few minutes work you
have the same pictures that will take minimal time to upload to the web.
Exploration and benefits for
learning
Images can have
many learning benefits, especially for the visual learners in the class.
Teachers can utilise images when presenting learning material to help engage the
students in the topic and to get them thinking which will most likely result in
many questions making the students keen to learn. Instead to getting students to
write a book review or take notes on a field trip they could instead be
encouraged to draw images or take photographs to catalogue the events, which would see the students
higher order thinking skills come into play. The meaning of literacy has
somewhat changed in the 21st century, from the ability to read and
write to ability to ‘read’ things such as images or gestures. In today’s
society we are faced with many images in our day-to-day life, making visual
literacy skills vital for everyone’s learning (Thibault & Walbert 2003).
Purposeful use with Primary school students
Teacher uses
·
Illustrate
concepts
·
Provide
examples of things
·
To
prompt discussion of a topic
·
To
encourage collaboration among students (JISC Digital Media 2013)
·
See-Think-Wonder
activity
Student uses
·
Document a field – digital images
·
Provide
evidence of what they have learnt by drawing an image
·
Can be
a prompt when reading
·
Take digital
images of a school project to include in a report
The images below
have been resized using the MobaPhoto program. The original image of figure 1 is
2.82 MB and the one seen here is 114 KB.
Figure 1: Resized image
The original image of figure 2 is 2.98 MB and the one seen
below is 214 KB.
Figure 2: Resized image
Podcasting: digital audio recordings
Please feel free to listen to the Voki instead of reading about the ease of use and implications for learners
Ease of use and implications for learners
The digital audio
program that I selected to trial was Voki. I found creating a Voki was easy and
fun to do. Voki has many options that allows you to change the skin, hair and lip
colour of the character, along with selecting a background and customizing the
characters clothing. Then there are a number of different options on how you can
give your character a voice, including record by phone, text to speech, with a
microphone or by the upload of an audio file. When making my Voki I used the
text to speech option. If you have never created a Voki I suggest you clickhere and try it. The activity of recording a podcast is a very simple task
that would be both enjoyable and education when used in a class activity for
students.
Exploration and benefits for
learning
A podcast can be
defined as a simple sound file that is shared with others when published online
(Fasso 2013). There are many different digital devices that can be used to
record and or listen to audio. These include directly to or from a computer or
portable voice recorders e.g. MP3 or iPod devices. After making an audio
recording they can be uploaded to the Internet or used as sound for a movie or PowerPoint
presentation (Fasso 2013). A podcast can be viewed live on the web or
downloaded and viewed at a later date. With the use of portable devices
podcasts can be listened to wherever and whenever a person pleases (Podcasting
in Education 2013). Podcasts can be beneficial to learning in the classroom as
they allows students to share their knowledge and learning experiences (Department
of Education 2013). It is simply another modern technology that students need
to be aware of, have the skills to utilise, while seeing the auditory learners
of the class being more engaged when a podcast activity in incorporated into a lesson. Not only can
students make their own podcasts they can download or listen to many
educational podcasts available on the Internet from organisations such as CSIRO
and ABC (Department of Education 2013).
Purposeful use with Primary school
students
Teacher uses
·
Provide
activity instructions for auditory learners
·
Communicate
with parents (Podcasting in Education 2013)
·
Incorporate
into assessment
Student uses
·
Listen
to a podcast relevant to research e.g. Scientist from CSIRO
·
Interview
guest experts (Podcasting in Education 2013)
·
Record
a review of a book or field trip
Digital Video
Ease of use and implications for
learners
The digital video program that I
downloaded to make a video was Windows Movie Maker 2.6. I found this program
very easy to use as the tool bar is displayed in order of the steps you need to
take when producing a video. The captions displayed around the program prompted
you along. For example when you have added your photos to the program a caption
prompts you to “drag a clip and drop it on the storyboard below”. This easy to
use program would be easily incorporated into many classroom activities to
engage all student learning styles as video clips, sound and text can be
utilised using this program.
Exploration and benefits for
learning
When creating a video students are
required to use and gain knowledge and skills of many other technologies apart
from the program they are using to construct their video. In order to collect
the material to make a video student’s may need to use a digital camera or
video camera, sound recording devices and other programs such as PowerPoint. The
study undertaken by Kearney & Shuck (2006) provided evidence that video tasks
helped students develop new literacy and teamwork skills which are relevant to
this generation’s future careers and everyday life. The image below depicts
Edgar Dales ‘Cone of Experience’ that he developed to demonstrate the role of
media learning. The model shows that learners learn more effectively by ‘doing’,
rather than by ‘reading or observing’ (Young 2004). Therefore the quality of a
learning experience is improved with the use of a practical video based activity
opposed to reading about or being shown by the teacher how to make a video. 
Figure 3: Cone of Experience (Young 2004)
Doing activities that include verbal symbols at the point of the cone, students are using Blooms lower order thinking skills. However if students are given the task of making a video, this sees them using higher order thinking skills as they are piecing together everything they have learnt in order to demonstrate their video making skills. Overall, I think that video use would be very beneficial in a primary school classroom as it can be used as a collaborative or individual activity where students experience many different technologies and their higher order thinking skills come into play.Purposeful use with Primary school students
Teacher uses
·
Providing additional information to students on
a topic to increase their knowledge and understanding
·
Educational videos on the topic of study
·
Providing ‘how to’ activity instructions
·
Recording student work e.g. speeches, plays
Student uses
·
Create a video to demonstrate what they have
learnt from a resent topic that has been taught to them
·
Students work in groups filming each other
making an educational video on how to do something and present to their peers
·
Video record parts of a school trip, incorporate
still shots and text to present to students parents
Below is the simple video I created using still
photographs and text. It depicts the process that occurs leading to(heat detection) and
doing artificial insemination in beef cattle.
Legal, safe and ethical guidelines for using and creating digital videos
·
10% of a work can be copied for educational
purpose
·
All
material that is not your own should be referenced appropriately. This includes
text, images, video and audio
·
All schools should have a content filter in
place on students computers to prevent the risk of children being exposed to
inappropriate material e.g. pornographic, violence or illegal practices (Fasso 2013)
·
Parental permission should be gained if digital
video that students are in is going to be uploaded to a blog, wiki or webpage
·
Videos shown to the class by the teacher should
have an appropriate rating for the age of the children viewing the footage
Digital videos may not require students to use the internet,
however if they do the above guidelines apply. It is expected that all teaching
staff comply with the guidelines provided to students to set the correct
example and reduce the chances of students doing something that breaches the
guidelines.
References
A Global Imperative: The Report of the 21st Century Literacy Summit. (2005),
Retrieved from http://www.nmc.org/pdf/Global_Imperative.pdf
Fasso, W. (2013). EDED20491 - ICT's for Learning Design: Study guide. Rockhampton, Qld:
CQUniversity, Australia
Kearney, M & Shuck, S. (2006).Spotlight
on authentic learning: Student developed digital video projects. Australasian
Journal of Educational Technology, 22(2), 189-208. Retrieved from http://www.ascilite.org.au/ajet/ajet22/kearney1.html.
Podcasting in Education. (2013). Retrieved March 24, 2013,
from http://podcasting-in-education.wikispaces.com/
Thibault, M & Walbert, D .
(2003). Reading images: an introduction
to visual literacy. Retrieved from
http://www.learnnc.org/lp/pages/675
Young, C.( 2004). Top ten uses of video
in education. Retrieved from http://www.videoaktiv.org/index.php?id=200
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