Week 5: Animated classrooms

This week we had a look at some of the uses of animation in the classroom. I did a Bachelor of  Media Studies (focusing on television) prior to my Grad DipEd so was particularly interested in this week's topic.

I was particularly inspired by the student- made claymations we watched in this week's lecture. They were so cute, it was great to see the students' imaginations at work. Animation is a great way for kids to express themselves, and  to learn some of the conventions of film and television (camera angles and shot types for example). Additionally, it can give them practice at narrative storytelling. Animation is also a creative way for students to present information rather than just writing paragraphs on a topic.

One of the downsides to claymation is that it is a very lengthy process. A faster alternative is to use a website that has pre-made animation clips that can be put together in lots of different orders. An  example of such a site is the Zimmertwins website: http://www.zimmertwins.com/movie/create. 

We had a go a making our own narrative animation at the Zimmertwins website. This is a great site that is designed for children. Students can pick from three different characters to 'star' in their animation- a boy, a girl, and a cat. They can also set the scene for their film, and a prop, from a diverse list. The website then has heaps of pre-made clips for students to play with, with many different character actions and emotions. There would be many, many different stories that could be produced with the material supplied on this site.

 Something I really liked about this site was that as the students build their film, they simultaneously build a translated text version of their story. The text is only simple paragraphs, but it could help children with semiotics as words are put into context. Whilst this website had lots of options for students to get creative with, it was well organized so that it wasn't complicated. The setup of this website is like a very basic version of Premiere/Final Cut in that students order their animation clips on a 'timeline'. Students can review their film as they go, and then make any changes they see fit. Therefore in using the Zimmertwins website students are getting used to the conventions of video editing software.

Here are some screenshots from my animation, about a superstar cat:

This week we also created avatars of ourselves on various websites. Building avatars could be used as a Design exercise, for example I designed a 'Super Student' complete with scroll, textbook and cape at the Lego website.

Below is my avatar from http://www.buildyourwildself.com/

                                      

Below is my Lego avatar from  http://www.reasonablyclever.com/      

 

                                                              Also in this lesson we had a look at some educational online games:

http://www.sumdog.com/ had a fun racing car math game, whose difficulty could be changed to suit different ages/abilities. This game was quite short but engaging as students had to try to beat other online competitors. 

A longer game could be found at    http://www.stopdisastersgame.org/en/home.html. This site is educational and fun, it gets students to think about how to plan a town so that the effects of natural disasters such as flooding and wildfire are reduced. This would be highly relevant when studying natural disasters as part of humanities. I think this is the key to incorporating games into lessons, making sure they are relevant and educational. They should still serve a learning purpose. 

 

Week 4: Telling stories with inspiration

This week we visited the ABC's Dust Echoes website and picked an aboriginal story to retell in pictures. 

You can see my work above, I chose to retell the Brolga Story.

You can check out the Dust Echoes website at : http://www.abc.net.au/dustechoes/dustEchoesFlash.htm

I feel compelled to warm though that some of the stories and their accompanying videos were a little grizzly and violent. I don't think this particular site is suitable for all ages, you could always adapt the activity to a different text though. This exercise again used the program Inspiration, which we looked at in week 1.  The activity was another good example of how Inspiration can be used to break down information/ideas. Though this time we were breaking down a story and retelling it using pictures and our own words. The pictures I used were actually screenshots from a video.

We could use this activity with our students as a comprehension exercise to see if the students have grasped the main ideas of a story. This exercise has the benefit of being both linguistic and visual, and can help students to understand the concepts of narrative and plot development. It also highlights the fact that it is not only written stories that have a narrative, that narrative still applies to the film medium. 

By applying this technique to a culturally relevant story, like those on the Dust Echoes website, we can integrate this activity into humanities lessons.

The other activity we completed in this workshop was to make an Excel graph of the number of each colour of M&Ms in a bag.  I am a big fan of chocolate, and I imagine a lot of kids are too so I think this activity would go well in the classroom. I'm not sure if all the parents would approve though, childhood obesity is such a concern these days, with schools are promoting healthy lunchboxes and banning junkfood in the tuckshop. If the idea of promoting chocolate deters you, again this activity could be adapted. I remember when I was in primary school we counted the cars that drove past the school over a set amount of time and noted the colour of each car using a tally sheet. The information collected from this could then be graphed in excel.

Whilst I had used Microsoft Excel previously, I hadn't realised that you could add pictures to your graphs and tables. It was a good reminder that there is always more to learn.

The obvious place to integrate Excel into the classroom would be during maths lessons, but also science as tables and graphs are often used to represent and compare data collected.

Below is the M&M table and graph I created in Excel:

 

Week 3: Playful Learning

I am a big believer in making learning fun, or at least interesting. What better way to do this than with games? That was our challenge this week, to create some educational games at the Quia website (http://www.quia.com/web). This website has numerous templates for you to use, I used them to create a multiple choice quiz, a hangman-type game and a matching game. 

To try my quiz go to :

http://www.quia.com/hm/671382.html

Below is a screenshot of my quiz:

To try my hangman game go to:

http://www.quia.com/quiz/2538632.html

Below is a screenshot of my hangman game:

To try my matching game go to:

                                                  http://www.quia.com/mc/2004708.html

Below is a screenshot of my matching game:

 

Aside from using the website to make games for our students, we can also let our students make their own games using this website. For example, the process of making a multiple choice quiz requires the student to show that they themselves know the answer to the questions. It also gets students to evaluate information and determine whats worth knowing as they consider what questions to ask.

During our workshop, once we had made our quizzes, we all swapped computers and did our peers' quizzes. This was great fun and lead to further discussion of the quiz topics afterward. The same activity could be done with primary school students, provided you are in a school that has sufficient computer resources.

The other activity we did in this lesson was making a design brief using the ID/P/E approach. 

This stands for: Investigate/Design, Produce, Evaluate. Things I liked about this system are it's problem solving approach, and promotion of higher order thinking.

The lecture for this week was about protecting students online. I found the discussion of cyber-bullying quite disturbing. It is sad to think such young children can be so deliberately unkind to one another. Yet I suppose if I think about it realistically, bullying happens in the physical playground, so it shouldn't surprise me that it occurs in the virtual playground. Yet it is so weak to bully someone online when you are sitting safely at home behind your computer. Thankfully there are campaigns that are trying to educate against cyber-bullying. The Leader Newspapers have recently launched their 'Don't Hurt' initiative. This initiative is backed up by The Alannah and Madeline Foundation's eSmart schools campaign. 

You can find more information at:

http://leader-news.whereilive.com.au/news/story/dont-hurt-schools-win-10m-to-fight-cyber-bullying/

and:

http://www.amf.org.au/Cybersafety/

Week 2: Some applications of Microsoft Office.

This week we used Microsoft Publisher to make a travel brochure. I made my brochure about Canada as i have always wanted to visit there (you can see my final brochure above). It was great to be able to choose my own topic and explore my own interests further. I will have to keep this experience in mind for my future teaching- that learning is much more engaging when you are relating it back to something that interests you. 

It seems there are so many situations in teaching where we are telling our students what they have to know. Aside from being more engaging, I think letting students pick their own topic is a great way to let students think about whats important to them and develop their own sense of identity. It won't always be practical as there are certain topics we have to cover in the curriculum but I will be looking for opportunities to give students some freedom. Choosing a topic for the products they create whilst learning how to use new programs is one way it can be incorporated.

Aside from exploring and researching a topic, getting students to design their own brochure is a good way to get them to consider the conventions of brochures and develop their creativity and design skills. There is also a little maths involved as they have to think about which order the flat pages they see on screen will appear once they are folded into a brochure. This activity also gives them practice at considering the audience and purpose of their projects.

This week we also started an ePortfolio using Microsoft Publisher, you can see an example of mine below.

The ePortfolio has a number of applications: 

A teacher could use it to show off examples of their work and technology skills when applying for a job.

Our students can use it to show their work off to parents, but also to keep track of how they have progressed over time, by giving them a visual representation of their improvement. This gives children some responsibility for their own learning. At the same time it is building the student's proficiency with technology. The ePortfolio is also a useful tool for the teacher to track a student's progress, and for the student's next teacher to get an idea of the student's prior knowledge and skill level.

Other benefits of using an ePortfolio rather than a paper one are the befits to the environment and budget as less paper and ink are used.

Week 1: What can we make with Inspiration?

                               

 Our first workshop for Learning Technologies required us to set up this blog. I've never had a blog or webpage before, I'm not even on Facebook, so this is all new to me!

Pleasantly, setting up this blog was not hard to do, I can picture primary school children would be able to do this task without a worry. I remember when I was in primary school we had to keep a written diary, where we would write about what we did over the weekend, and then the teacher would read it and correct our spelling. I can imagine in the modern classroom a blog could replace this diary writing, as a virtual journal.

That said, I think there is still merit in written diaries, especially for the younger levels, as a way to practice the necessary handwriting skills. I remember writing in my diary in primary school and enjoying illustrating my entries with pictures. Although drawing is not a skill I need to use much in my adult life, I think it is still worth incorporating into the classroom as a way of engaging students and developing creative skills and expression. Multiple intelligence theory suggests that there are some people who would particularly benefit from written work and drawing, those with Linguistic and Spatial intelligences. One of the best ways for people with strong Linguistic intelligence to learn is by note taking (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_multiple_intelligences), I interpreted this as written notes but am curious as to whether this extends to typing notes.

Other than setting up this blog, our other task for our Learning Technology workshop was to create a flowchart on the topic of our choice. I chose to think back to my VCE Biology and create a flowchart showing the basic kingdoms we classify lifeforms into. You can see it below. This flowchart was created using a program called Inspiration which is apparently quite a popular program in Primary Schools. The White Paper threw it's support behind Inspiration, suggesting that the program could be used to as a visual learning tool to " help students to take notes, brainstorm and synthesize their ideas into diagrams or outlines".Furthermore, it stated that " because students were able to show the connections and see the relationship between ideas, they were able to develop a more complete understanding of a concept." In this way, Inspiration would be a great program to help visual learners (people strong in Spatial intelligence). I found the program quite easy and intuitive to use, with a good library of education-related clipart, so from a practical point of view I think it would be very easy to incorporate into the classroom.