Week 5

Wk 5: Reflections on Animation and Educational Games

Today in our tutorial we focused on animation-type websites. On the whole I believe these to be a fantastic way to support and inspire literacy- based activities, especially amongst those 'literacy reluctant' students.

The first website we looked at was http://www.zimmertwins.com/ which is designed for making movies with a predetermined list of characters and actions. I found this to be a lot of fun, so I imagine my future students will find this to be an enjoyable exercise also. See below for a excerpt of my movie!

I believe a program like to this to be very useful in the classroom. Firstly, students (on the whole) are naturally very interested in comics, cartoons etc and this is a way to engage them in completing literacy-based tasks. I also like that the format of the activity is not too 'free' for students, i.e. there is a predetermined list of characters, settings and actions. Therefore I believe that students will not get too overwhelmed by choice as the restrictions in place will make it easier for them to generate ideas and end up with a better-quality finished product.

I think of some students I have come across during my placements whose literacy skills were well below that of their peers. These students were incredibly hard to motivate to complete story-writing in the traditional sense (e.g. with a pencil, writing book and 'silent working'). I think these students would most benefit from completing literacy/writing based tasks in a format such as this, as many of the challenging elements of writing are removed - e.g. students are not required to handwrite and they don't need to come up with the initial ideas.


The next website we looked at today was www.buildyourwildself.com . This involves the building of a character incorporating both human and animalistic features. An aspect of this website that really appealed to me was that after creating your 'wild self' you were provided with factual information about the animal features you had included. E.g. for my creation to the left of screen ("The Atoo-Peacock") I was told that I had included a Palm Cockatoo Crest which 'helps you communicate - a raised crest can signal to other birds that you're a friend" and a Peacock Male Tail which "can grow to be 60 inches long and helps scare away other animals that may want to eat you". Fantastic. This would work wonderfully in the classroom where, for example, students could make a wild version of themselves and then use the facts provided by the website to go and research other facts about their hybrid creature. Or, alternatively, students could use the website to build characters (with or without animal features) to include in their narrative writing. I could see this working very well if it happened at the beginning of a narrative writing unit, where the exercise would motivate students to brainstorm ideas for their stories especially helpful for those strong visual learners and reluctant writers. The other website that would be good for this is www.reasonablyclever.com/?page_id=29 where you make a Lego character by modifying hair, face, clothes, etc.

Overall i think anything that can act as a stimulus for literacy is very useful and should be used in the classroom. On my recent practicum I spent a small amount of time in a 3/4 classroom where the students each had the use of laptops and access to internet. When it came to 'writing time' the teacher simply said - "Use you computer to write a story". So I saw students typing their stories into blank word documents. This technique worked ok for the keen writers and those with high-level literacy skills, but not so well for those strugglers. Let's just say I saw a lot of procrastinating and distracting behaviours, and not a lot of words written. How fantastic would the use of these websites be at this initial stage of writing for these 3/4 students! It would be incredibly fun, engaging and stimulating activity for both those keen and those reluctant writers.

'Build Your Wild Self' example number 2 - 'The Rein-Monarch Butterfly"










Lego Character

Another website we explored today was www.abc.net.au/rollercoaster/rollermache/default/inspire.htm which included a series of videos outlining the work of animators and the making of certain animated TV shows. These TV shows included some likely to be very well known by Primary Age students such as 'Shawn the Sheep' and 'Jane the Dragon'.

A website such as this would be fabulous to include at the beginning of a unit on animation in order to engage the students and generate some excitement around the upcoming activities.

A unit on animation would be fantastic for students and has clear links with VELS, ICT for creating and ICT for communicating. On this website you can actually download storyboards, props and sets. These would act as a great way to scaffold the unit - moving towards students either modifying these to make them their own, or actually creating their own once having gained ideas from the website about how these are done.

Another program that was drawn to my attention in the workshop was Microsoft Photostory - which i have since downloaded and played with on my computer. I found this to be an extremely user-friendly program which can be used to display a series of video in the form of a 'story' or 'videoclip'. I made a photostory with some of my photos from my trip to Europe, with an appropriate travel song playing in the background. Fantastic! For 10 minutes work I managed to create a 4.5 minute professional-looking presentation depicting the highlights of my trip.

I believe this would be a wonderful tool to use in the classroom - from probably grade 2 and upwards. Students could use this to present work, make presentations depicting highlights of excursions or camps, or even take a series of photos to tell a story. I take my mind back to an assignment I had in Yr 11 Media - to make a videoclip. In order to do this I my group used a series of photos with a backing track. This process took hours!!!! It is amazing that the students of today have such a quick and easy program to complete the exact same activity.

Another way this could be used in literacy is that the teacher could use a series of photos as a stimulus, and have the students write a story based on te pictures. This would again remove the initial (sometimes insumountable) challenge of generating the initial ideas for writing.

Another website we explored in the workshop today was 'Sketchswap' whereby you contribute a sketch to the site and it get swapped and then you get a sketch completed by someone else. The sketch I received is to the left of screen - a far better sketch than the one that I contributed!!!!

This is a very interesting idea; however it would not work to use this program in the classroom as you have no control over what your students will get back. E.g. one student in my workshop received a sketch which state "Don't eat spaghetti, eat human meat" - not so suitable for the school context! However if you could replicate this idea in the Primary School, by perhaps a 'sketch swap letterbox' or something, where a teacher could do a quick scan of all of the sketches and then swap them for students. I believe this idea would work really well as sketching can be a very popular activity amongst Primary School students, and this would be a wonderful way for students to share ideas, cultivate relationships across age levels, and just generally generate excitement, celebrate creativity and create a sense of community in the school.

Today we also had the opportunity to explore http://www.ziptales.com.au/ which I found to be a great resource for a wide variety of classroom-based ICT activities. This site is also good because it is based in Ballarat and I believe it to be important to support Australian websites.

It was difficult to view all aspects of the website because you have to be signed up, but from what I was able to see I can imagine a wide variety of applications in the classroom.

For example, the site could be used for some interactive, team-based story writing where students move around the room to different students' computers and continue their stories. I imagine this activity to be very good to encourage mental flexibility as students need to continuously orientate themselves to new stories, characters and ideas. I think this type of activity would also be very good for the perfectionist, type A personalities as they are placed out of their comfort zone and need to adapt to changes to their own original story. I guess the only worry with this technique is that those students with Autism or Aspergers may find this activity too much, and they may feel too out of control that it may actually be detrimental to the learning outcomes. If this was the case with some students in my class I would allow them to write theor own story and sit out of the rotational exercise. From what I could see the make-and-do section of the website is also a fantastic resource fore teachers as it includes instructions for making a wide variety of objects across many subjects.

Overall I am blown away by the amount of quality animation websites available for use by Primary School students. I am inspired to use these as much as possible to appeal to visual learners, stimulate literacy and hopefully, one day, be involved in the implementation of an integrated unit on animation like I read that so many other Victorian schools are doing.

Week 4

Week 4: Using Inspiration in Literacy and Microsoft Excel in Numeracy




Today in the workshop we began with a literacy task. We were required to watch an Aboriginal Dreamtime story from www.abc.net.au/dustechoes , and then retell the story using the mind-mapping program Inspiration (which we were introduced to in the week 1 workshop). At first I was quite taken aback and unsure as to how I would be able to complete this literacy task using such a seemingly scientifically-based program, let alone how my future students would be able to manage this task.


However I persevered. Firstly I watched the online video of the dreamtime story "The Bat and the Butterfly". Then I opened and explored the teacher's guide in order to deepen my understanding of the story. I noted the 'blackline master' depicting the events of the story out of order - with the aim of students rearranging the events into correct order. I used these events as a starting point for my Inspiration diagram.


I then watched the video and tried to pull out pivotal 'screenshots' that would depict the story via diagram. I really made a concerted effort to try to limit the amount of screenshots used, to ensure my finished product was a diagram, and not just pictures with copious amounts of writing attached. I ended up with 7 pictures, and placed a sentence under each. I then arranged these in a 'snake shaped' flow chart to show the progression of the story.


I can see this activity as being useful for use in my future classroom, but only in the upper primary years. I found the task to be quite fiddley and slightly tedious - i.e. having to take screenshots at 'just the right time' and then import them into Inspiration via Paint I felt to be quite a 'clunky' task. I therefore feel that the lower and middle primary students may become frustrated and disheartened by the process required to complete the task and it therefore would not be suitable at that level. I would used it in a 5/6 class if, and only if, students were made very familiar with the process required and displayed general confidence and competence regarding computers.


The second focus of today's workshop was to complete a numeracy task using Microsoft Excel - a task I am very familiar with and found to be quite easy.


We were required to separate M & Ms into colour groups and graph these. Your can see my graph to the left of this text. I created a bar graph and formatted the bars as to better reflect the data they are representing - e.g. red bar for 'red' category. I also added individual data labels onto the top of the bars, again to increase the clarity of the data. I then copied a picture from the M & Ms website and placed it beside the heading to make the graph look more interesting.

I think graphing data is a fantastic activity for the classroom as it is a great way of integrating numeracy with ICT, and appealing to visual learners.


However I do not feel comfortable with using M & Ms in the classroom. Along with the obvious issues associated with allergies and childhood obesity, I also don't believe that I as a teacher should be seen to be promoting brand-name products to my students. I would much prefer to use confetti shapes or something similar that students can sort and graph.

In the lecture this week we learned about "The Learning Federation" website. I am incredibly impressed with this resource, and have found a multitude of uses for this whilst on placement. I have mainly used it for numeracy (counting and subtraction) and literacy (sequencing and describing events in chronological order). I found that my students really enjoyed these activities when we played them together on the interactive whiteboard and this succeeded in "allowing for multiple and distributed intelligences" and "generating motivation to learn" (taken from G. Powell lecture notes - accessed 29/08/10 entitled Integrating ICT in the Classroom).

As I was most recently on placement in a Prep class, many of the students did not have adequate reading literacy levels to allow them to understand explanation or instruction without additional attention or strong visual cues. Using activities from The Learning Federation website on the IWB worked well to remedy this as students were provided those strong visual cues, along with the written and auditory instructions. I predict that programs such as this will not only assist them to understand the task on that particular day, but also actually, over time, improve their literacy skills - which just goes to show what a fantastic resource ICT can be in the classroom.

In terms of "generating motivation to learn" - students were always incredibly motivated when they knew that the class were to be doing and activity "on the big screen". I ensured that I had students participate in the tasks, which further increased motivation as all of the students "wanted to have a go".

Aside from The Learning Federation, another program I used quite a lot on placement was "Rainforest Maths" which I also found to be very good. This was simply a levelled maths program covering all areas of VELS that was very interactive and colourful, and the students seemed to love. Maybe there is some scope to discuss this in future years of this subject?

Overall this week in Learning Technologies has perhaps been the most enjoyable and useful for me so far, because of the exploration of the Learning Federation and its wonderful application in the classroom.

Week 3

Week 3: Technology Design Process and Online Games Development

The focus of the first half of today's workshop was on technology design briefs. We were given the brief as follows: "Design a frog that jumps using.... cardboard card, picture of a frog, rubber band, sticky tape, glue-stick, scissors."

Myself an my partner made sure to follow the 4 steps of design; Investigate, Design, Produce, Analyse/Evaluate as this is how we would expect our future students to complete the activity.

At first we investigated possible ways to complete the design brief by experimenting with ways to use the cardboard and the rubber band to make the frog jump. I personally struggled with this section, and the ambiguity of the task. I was convinced that there must have been 'one right answer' and was desperate to find out what it was. This resulted in myself and my partner persevering with an idea that was not the most successful. Once we came up with a workable method we then designed how we were going to create the jumping frog. After briefly designing the frog we produced the design using the materials. Once we had trialled our design we then evaluated our design - i.e. judging if we achieved our original goal.

During the evaluation process we came to the conclusion that our design was not actually very good, and I was very reluctant to demonstrate the design to the rest of the class, especially once I had seen the quality of everyone else's attempts.

Based upon my experience completing this task I can understand how some students may struggle with a technology design process task such as this. Too often in Primary Schools students are exposed to projects/tasks/worksheets where there is 'one right answer', and this is in direct contrast to a task such as this where there are many right answers and many ways to achieve these. I can imagine that this could cause anxiety and uncertainty in some students (as it did in me), but in a good way as it encourages students to take their thinking out of their comfort zone, experience some sense of failure and realise that being good at something does not mean you have to be a perfectionist all of the time.

Overall I think that this task (including the accompanying paperwork) is fantastic for the classroom. It encourages lateral and higher order thinking and incorporates skills from many different curriculum areas - e.g. science, literacy, numeracy. It assists the students to develop a sense of responsibility for learning, which is a necessary change of pace for students as they are all too often simply required to regurgitate information provided to them by the teacher.

The second half of the workshop was focused on the creation of Online Games using quia.com.

The thing that struck me most about creating the games was just how easy and user-friendly it was. Within 5 minutes I had created a multiple choice quiz about cites of the world and had created word jumbles based on lunchtime foods.


The benefits of a teacher creating their own online quizzes was highlighted to me when reviewing this week's technology lecture "The Protection of Students Online" and through further independent reading of www.cybersmart.gov.au/schools. These highlighted to me just how careful teachers need to be when students are accessing the internet to ensure they do not accidentally (or purposefully!) stumble upon inappropriate material in cyberspace. The risk of this can be minimised via the implementation of an 'acceptable use kit' www.education.vic.gov.au/management/elaerning suppotservices/www/formsttemps.htm. However a simple way of managing of students access to the internet is via the use of websites like QUIA. Here teachers can be more trustful of the content of the website and the pop-ups, advertisements etc that are likely to present themselves on the page, and therefore avoid any internet misuse issues.


In the middle to upper primary years I can imagine that these quizzes/activities would be more useful in a different way. I think that students would gain much more from the learning and be much more motivated if they were to research a topic and then create the quiz for their friends/family/teacher to complete. Therefore (like with the design briefs) students are encouraged to take responsibility for their own learning, which is incredibly empowering and leads to better learning outcomes.

Week 2

Week 2: Microsoft Publisher and ePortfolios

Today in our Learning Technologies workshop we explored Microsoft Publisher, and looked at how to make brochures and ePortfolios using this program.

I have quite a lot of previous experience using Microsoft Publisher, having used it since I was very young. I often use it to create complicated documents, when I want to have more control over the manipulation of the graphics and headings. On my teaching placements, I used Microsoft Publisher very frequently to create worksheets/learning sheets for my class.

So, when I found out that we would be using Microsoft Publisher today I was confident in my abilities. However, despite my previous experience I still found that I learned a few new things.

For example, I learned about how to paste text 'unformatted'. I think this is very handy knowledge to have, as if I have a lot of text to include in a Publisher document, I like to type this in word first. However I often have problems with pasting this text into Publisher, as it maintains the column and spacing formats. This is handy knowledge to pass onto my future students also, as I imagine they will also be cutting and pasting text from different programs/the internet (properly referenced or paraphrased of course!), and constant reformatting can be annoying and time consuming.

One of the Microsoft Publisher tasks we completed was a travel brochure. In order to do this we used a 3-fold brochure template. I chose to complete my brochure on London, and I imported pictures from the internet and added text. You can see one side of my brochure in this blog, which includes the front and back page.

I can envision this brochure task working very effectively in the classroom. The template gives students a bit of a 'head start' in terms of what goes where, and ensures a professional-looking finished product that students can be proud of.

The task itself is very broad in terms of the subject matter it can be adapted to. Students could make a brochure on virtually anything! For example - in science they could create a brochure about how a torch works, humanities they could create a brochure on the effects of drought, in English they could create a brochure to accompany an oral presentation - all combining the knowledge of subject matter with computer processing skills.

I think it is very important, however, to ensure students are aware of copyright and plagiarism issues, and that they are not simply cutting from the internet and pasting to their project. Greg mentioned in the workshop today to encourage students paste into Microsoft Word, highlight key phrases, paraphrase etc. I think this is a good strategy, as it works on important literacy skills such as extracting important information, and ensures the work you are seeing is the student's and the student's only!

The other task we completed in the workshop today was the beginnings of an ePortfolio to be used in job interviews. I think Microsoft Publisher's "web page" option is a fantastic, simple way to create the ePortfolio, and I plan to use this to create my Portfolio.
In terms of using ePortfolios in the classroom, i think they are a fantastic way of documenting student achievement and progress over their school lives - using the ePortfolio to show the "process of learning" over time (Woodward & Nanlohy). They also provide great opportunity for students to learn and practice their ICT skills. However I am concerned about the amount of work that appears to be involved in creating these. I think that the teacher would have to be very strategic in terms of how they were used in the classroom, as they would need to be integrated into the curriculum very well, so the ePortfolio forms part of the curriculum, instead of being the curriculum.

Overall I think Microsoft Publisher is a fantastic program to use in the classroom and gives the students another ICT 'tool' for their 'toolbox'. However when it comes to ePortfolios teacher professional judgement is required to ensure that the construction of these leads to best possible learning outcomes.

Week 1

Week 1: Inspiration Reflections

Today was our first Learning Technology workshop, and we were introduced to 'blogging' and to mind-mapping through the computer program Inspiration. I have never blogged before, so was incredibly interested in setting up and managing my blog. I was really struck by just how easy blogging is! It could easily be managed by Grade 3 students and older, and provides a wonderful alternative to the traditional 'pen and paper' tasks. I am looking forward to learning more about the features, uses and application of blogging in the classroom as I continue to complete weekly blogs for this assessment task.

Inspiration is a program used to make visual maps. These can be made incredibly detailed to include pictures, audio clips, videos, additional information, hyperlinks. "Inspiration encourages deeper, more critical thinking that improves creativity, comprehension and retention" (http://www.inspiration.com/).

I really enjoyed learning about and 'playing with' Inspiration. You can see the two maps I created in this blog. The first map, "Places in the World", I created with the 'diagram tool'. I used the 'arrange' button to line up the items - using the option 'tree'. I can see the diagram tool being useful for students to create many maps, including family trees, and as perhaps an introduction to more complex mind mapping.

The second map I created with the 'mind map tool'. Here I used a more complex idea "The 5 Food Groups", and mapped these based on numerous levels spanning from the 5 groups to individual food item. This map is more complex to look at, but the graduated lines and the different colours make it easy to comprehend. I see this type of map useful for students to organise ideas around more complicated concepts where in depth information is required.

Through spending some time in the workshop exploring this program and learning about its features, as well as completing the readings around the topic, and briefly exploring other online mind-mapping tools, such as http://www.mindmeister.com/ and www.mindomo.com , I am able to clearly see the benefit of its use in the classroom.

The thing that immediately struck me about the program was how fantastic it is for visual and spatial learners (Gardner, 1993). School students are required to absorb "an overwhelming amount of information" from a variety of different sources, and therefore need a variety of ways to organise, represent and synthesise information, in a way that is meaningful to them (i.e. that complies with their learning style). This ensures the best chance that the information will be retained and understood. Inspiration provides students with a way to do this via mind mapping, whilst removing the need for students to spend their time and energy manually 'making the map' as the program does this for them. Therefore the student is free to concentrate on the information/facts/relationships - allowing them to employ their higher order thinking skills (Rogers, 1995 as cited in www.inspiration.com/sites/default/files/documents/How_Digital_Tools_Prepare_Students_for_the_21st_Century.pdf).

I was also struck by how widely applicable the program is across the curriculum. I previously considered diagrams and mindmaps to be mainly used in science, or other factual type topic areas. However from reading more about mind mapping, I am able to see that it is absolutely applicable to other areas such as English - e.g. essay writing or exploring the development of a novel. This is a way of engaging the left-brain' or 'logic' thinkers who may have previously struggled with English - again demonstrating the benefit of the use of the program in the classroom.

Overall, I see Inspiration as a program that I will integrate in my teaching. It is widely applicable, employs visual learning technology that has been shown to improve many areas of student learning and allows students to develop higher order thinking skills (www.inspiration.com/sites/default/files/documents/How_Digital_Tools_Prepare_Students_for_the_21st_Century.pdf).

References

Gardner, H. (1993). Multiple intelligences: The theory in practice. NY: Basic Books.

A CollinsConsults White Paper Prepared for Inspiration Software, Inc. White Paper: How Digital tools prepare students for the 21st century: www.inspiration.com/sites/default/files/documents/How_Digital_Tools_Prepare_Students_for_the_2ast_Century.pdf. Accessed 30/07/10.