The notion of connection is intrinsic to every aspect of humanity. So vital, in fact, that our very lives depend upon it as every breath, every thought and every action is preceded by millions of synapses connecting, transmitting and communicating important information.
This network of thought-and-action-determining connections don't stop inside the confines of skin and bone. In a mysterious way they link up to a greater network where, in some instances, our thought-processes are absorbed into the minds of others, while, in other instances, we take on the thoughts of others and somehow allow it to shape our own internal matrix.
This is the wonder of communication and learning.
With the advent of the internet, we've been provided with what could almost be described as a visual representation of the "human internet" - that macro-network where the ebb and flow of thought and action in society at large shapes the individual's downloads and uploads, learnings and expressions.
From an educator's perspective, that, of course, changes everything. Learners no longer have to rely on teachers to be their only source of "information downloads" , but can now access a world which offers thoughts, ideas and perspectives far beyond their own or even that of their teachers.
The role of the teacher is then to provide learners with opportunities to partake in this macro-network - to guide their "uploads and downloads" in ways that would best benefit their futures.
This blog investigates websites, applications and internet functions that can serve as powerful "connection-points", or tools for transfomative learning in the classroom.
Skype is a VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) communication software, which offers free Skype-to-Skype video calls, and cheap Skype-to-landline or mobile phone calls.
What are the educational benefits of Skype?
Skype provides an easy and interactive way of communicating with people from all around the world. As students connect with people from other cities, countries or continents, they have the opportunity to learn about cultural differences, history, language, and many other things. Student engagement and comprehension will greatly improve through real-life, first-hand interaction with “real people”, because not only do they learn something about a certain topic, but they can talk to someone who is “in” that topic. For instance, instead of just learning isolated Japanese words and sentences from their (English first language, Caucasian) teacher, they can speak to Japanese peers who want to learn more about English. Learners will learn about the culture, the customs and the thinking that surrounds Japanese. All of a sudden, words might have more meaning because the context is understood, or because there’s a real life application for it as they communicate to their Japanese friends over Skype.
A learning exchange can therefore take place at a much greater depth where learners will learn about the context of a particular topic, to a degree that perhaps a teacher cannot provide to students within a typical classroom situation.
What are the concerns related to Skype?
“Skype is another avenue for digital mischief. In addition, as with many P2P applications, Skype users are effectively anonymous, and this lack of accountability can be worrisome (Educause, 2007).”
References
Educause Learning Initiative (2006). Seven things you should know about YouTube. Retrieved August 30, 2010, fromwww.educause.edu/ELI/7ThingsYouShouldKnowAboutSkype/162373
Living outside of my own country, I often find myself thinking about home - the places, the sights, the sounds. When I first moved to Australia a few years ago, I discovered Google Earth, and it completely distracted me from my daily tasks. Time and again I was amazed at how quickly Google updated their technology to be more innovative, more insightful and more addictive. This brilliant weblication fascinated me, because at first, I was able to see my city from above. A year or so later, photo's began to appear over the map of Cape Town and I spent hours looking at the places I missed most. Not long after that, 360 street-view literally appeared on the map, and I was virtually walking the streets of Cape Town (without the danger of being mugged!)
More than this, I began to scout the globe for places I have never heard of, or places I've always heard of, but could never picture in my mind. Every now and then I would look at culture groups, view the statistics of some cities, look at videos and photos from popular destinations and find countries I never knew existed.
Now, I know everyone is probably not as geeky as me, but I believe this application has the potential to stir up so much curiosity and interest amongst students, and I would most certainly use this in my classroom. Google Earth has taken the last excuses away from any geo-deprived American citizen who thinks Australia is next to the Alps. And to all those out there who ask me about the "lions and tigers" in Africa - go see for yourself that TIGERS live in ASIA.
And to the person in San Fransisco who asked my cousin how long the bus trip from Africa was, I'd like to suggest that you get onto Google Earth and use the zoom-out function. It's simple.
Classroom uses for Google Earth are vast. The best part of it all is that Google has ever so generously provided us with a Google Earth for my classwebsite: subject specific lesson plans, classroom ideas and strategies - all directly related to the application and designed by teachers.
In the primary school context where I'm currently doing my placement, I will employ the interactive white board to show the year 1 class more about China in preparation for their international day. One student is from there, so it's a way of linking his stories and experiences to the rest of the class. In the process of a discussion like this, learners can gain understanding of each other, as well as knowledge required by the Essential Learnings.
Downsides of Google Earth:
- it consumes a substantial amount of bandwidth and requires a good internet connection and graphics card.
- images are not consistent across the globe, and are not in real-time. Some locations might be highly detailed, while others might be nearly invisible.
So we've established in an earlier post that video killed more than just the radio star. Now we will have a brief look at how to make those killer video's, and how that applies to the classroom setting.
To start with, there are a few very basic video editing programs available for common use:
All of the above ones are very simple to operate and can easily be used in the classroom. Perhaps the simplest of the three would be MovieMasher, which is a downloadable open source video editing application. This is handy for primary school learners, and they would be able to find their way around the interface rather intuitively. It can be used for stitching together a nice slide show, or editing digital video. Because these programs have a visual time-line, it's a great way of introducing or reinforcing the concept of sequence in story lines. Groups of learners could be given some pictures, and they then have to order them as they think it should go. After doing that on the editing program, they need to narrate it and synchronise their audio track to the visual track.
For those who have access to Sony Vegas or Apple Final Cut Pro, I would strongly suggest those over any of the above mentioned programs when it comes to teacher-made videos. If teachers want to make impressive, engaging videos for their classes, for the parents or for their communities, then Vegas or FCP would offer much more versatility. I have worked a little bit with Vegas and I love the creative expression that it allows you to have. Mastering the basics is fairly easy and online tutorials are always available on YouTube, like this one for instance.
Below is a video that I made more than a year ago for EDCU 11021, where I had to depict various stages of my "personal journey" in terms of the arts. I uploaded it to Vimeo - a great site for displaying and viewing vlog type videos.
Picnics are rather happy occasions. We don't have picnics at funerals, or even sad rainy days. In movies, picnics are times where families go to the hills and meadows to fly kites, eat cheese on long French loafs, sing at each other in happy chorus, and escape Nazi soldiers. Occasionally there would be a bird which flutters by to join the picnic - not to eye off the food - but simply to join in song, in which case, the mother of the family would normally sing at the bird with both hands cupped.
Unfortunately, my recollection of real-life picnics are somehow not matched to this picture-perfect picnic. I don't know if I was the only one to miss out on the happiness of picnics, but mostly, we didn't sing at each other, we yelled at each other: "OI! PASS THE CHEESE!".
Birds did not join in song, they swooped us. Along with the flies. And the mozzies. And the closest thing we had in resemblance to a kite would have had to be the plastic plates taking off in the wind. Maybe it's just me and my family - after all, I do recollect us having a picnic on a stranger's front lawn once. And then there was another time when we decided to spread the blanket on the side of a highway. (Might I add that it was 12 pm and there was no tree in sight. And...we were in the middle of a desert. Needless to say, we had unintentional melted cheese sandwiches.)
So in my mind, picture-perfect picnics don't exist. Well, technically they don't...but fortunately cheating does. I'm not sure how the movie people did all their cheating, but nowadays we have Picnik (with a K) - a handy online photo manipulation application. It can change the look from "hey, we're having lunch on your lawn, strange man", to one of those happy neighbourhood shots that makes the photo say, "it's times like these you wish your town was so open an inviting". Yes, it's true, and I have to warn you that with the power of Picnik you are prone to become a chronic liar.
However, it's a great tool for the classroom. Help learners see the power of digital manipulation - show them how colours, expressions, compositions and contexts can change what an image is saying, and give them the chance to try that themselves. As they play around with images (ones they took or ones they download through Flickr, for instance) they will discover the value of visual literacy and the power of communicating to others through pictures.
Below are some photos I took and then edited with Picnik.
Video killed more than just the radio star. If we reflect on how much we actually learn from watching moving images with sound, there is, without a doubt, a lot to think about. World Wide studies in 2005 ranked Australians 7th for time spent watching TV, with a whopping 22 hours per person per week on average (Nationmaster, 2005).
During those hours we spend watching television programs, movies, advertisements and online video clips, some things do, surprisingly, stick around in the process of going in one ear (or eye) and out the next. For instance, I have friends overseas who have learnt to speak conversational English simply through repeated exposure to subtitled Hollywood movies. It's easy to delve much deeper into this topic and from a sociological point of view analyse the effects of video material on the behaviours, cultures, and expressions of society at large. However, the bottom-line in this case is education and the significance video holds for effective pedagogy:
Duffy (2007, p.176) states the following:
"Video can be a powerful educational and motivation tool. However, a great deal of the medium's power lies notin itself, but in how it is used. Video is not an end in itself, but a means toward achieving learning goals and objectives. Effective instructional video is not television-to-students instruction but rather teacher-to-student instruction, with video as a vehicle for discovery."
When discussing videos and e-learning, obvious attention is drawn to YouTube. This website has certainly been a phenomena to observe over the past decade and so clearly displays the younger generation's demand for instant, full-colour, sound-wired connection to people, stories and events. For this reason, learning managers who solely rely on black and white text for conveying ideas and understandings, will speak a language foreign to that of their young students. Integrating video material into the curriculum is easy - and to prove that, here's a list of suggested strategies for the use of YouTube in the classroom as formulated by Duffy (2007):
- YouTube can be used to create a learning community where everyone has a voice, anyone can contribute, and the value lies equally within the creation of the content and the networks of learners that form around content discovered and shared (Educause Learning Initiative, 2006).
- Allow studetns to create a short video as part of an assessment item instead of the traditional essay. Becoming involved in the creation of a video, "heightens a student's visual literacy, an important skill in today's electronic culture" (Educause Learning Initiative, 2006).
- YouTube allows the learner to experiment in new media to convey information and knowledge. "Many educators believe that the act of creating content, in virtually any form, is a valuable learning exercise" (Educause Learning Initiative, 2006).
- Record a video of a guest presenter relevant to the unit/lesson and use the YouTube comments feature to generate some discussion.
- Pose a question at the end of class that can be considered from distinct viewpoints and ask learners to search for 2-3 video references relating to the different perspectives. the use of video as a part of an anticipatory set to promote discussion can be useful tool to engage with an audience already enamoured with the YouTube phenomenon.
- The use of video also has several advantages over graphic and textual media. E.g.: portrayal of concepts involving motion, the alteration of space and time; the observation of dangerous processes in a safe environment; dramatisation of historical and complex events; demonstration of sequential processes the viewer can pause and review.
- to support language learning, at the end of one of your classes, decide on a particular topic and ask students to search for short videos on this topic to watch it and create a difficult vocabulary guide.
The above list contains a general list of ideas which can easily be adjusted for various year-levels or key learning areas. For my own benefit as future learning manager, I have decided to collect YouTube videos under three different categories:
"Grabbers": clips which can be used to engage learners with a theme at the start of a unit. These would be clips that creatively inspire interest in a topic. Video 1 of 3 below would be fitting for a year 6-7 SOSE context where a unit on water is introduced.
"Facilitators": videos which can be used to facilitate learning or invite a higher order thinking response. Video 2 of 3 below would suit a year 5-7 context and could lead into group discussions, or a writing project where learners are asked to script the video.
"Entertainers": Amusing/Funny clips to use as a time-filler or reward in the classroom. See video 3 of 3 below - a personal favourite!
Conclusively, when dealing with video material, it is important that the video does not do the teaching, but that it facilitates teaching. Learning Managers need to scaffold the viewing and interpretation of a video in order for it to be utilised successfully for learning. Furthermore, ample opportunity needs to be given to learners to not only watch video's, but to respond to them, discuss them through collaboration-tools, and also create them. This will ensure the true power of Web 2.0 is maximised. When asking learners to create video material, the elements of visual literacy need to be covered explicitly so that learners can understand their medium. This could be a time-consuming process, but is well worth the effort, considering the skills learners can gain. My next blog will touch on video editing and publishing.
References
Educause Learning Initiative (2006). Seven things you should know about YouTube. Retrieved August 30, 2010, fromhttp://www.educause.edu/ELI/7ThingsYouShouldKnowAboutYouTu/156821.
Duffy, P. (2007). Engaging the YouTube Google-eyed generation: strategies for using web 2.0 in teaching and learning. Paper presented at the 6th European conference on e-learning. Retrieved August 30, 2010 from http://books.google.com.au/books?hl=en&lr=&id=spo9X16qn30C&oi=fnd&pg=PA173&dq=youtube+in+the+classroom&ots=rsRDyZhRDv&sig=VpIzVfBTwIEW_NQk1rNlQb9CNus#v=onepage&q&f=false
Nationmaster (2005). Media statistis. Retrieved August 30, 2010, from http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/med_tel_vie-media-television-viewing
With the advent of the Creative Commons licence, we have been given a great deal of visual freedom: When someone publishes a photo online under this type of licence, we can download it, re-use it(with some restrictions), and in some cases even edit it before re-use. (If you're scratching your head at the words Creative Commons, then click here to get some more information on the topic.)
Just for the sake of exercising my Creative Commons rights, I downloaded two pictures from Flickr, (both of which were available for re-use and edit), and I edited them using Adobe Photoshop.
Flickr is an online photo database and contains over 73 million photos. This formidable photo sharing community, along with its design tools, makes Flickr a compelling tool that has amazing potential for education.
To document your classroom displays and find great ideas for displays from other teachers.
To document an activity such as creating animations. Note the use of a hyperlink under the pic to take you to finished animations.
Publish instructional writing.
Using the comment feature to write about images in a sequence such as this example.
Note feature built into Flickr
You can add notes over your different parts of your image once loaded up into Flickr. To do this, you click on 'Add Note' above the picture. A box will pop open for you to type your note into. You can click and drag the square that will mark where your note will be placed to the desired location. When you have finished typing your comment, you click 'Save'. From then on, anyone that puts their mouse over the square on the picture will see the note you typed.
There are a number of excellent examples of how you can use this idea in education. You do need to be aware that the comments will only be able to be seen when in Flickr. You can 't embed them with working comments on a wiki or blog.
Stories - year one kids.
Rock Our World - Music Project at Pt England School (instructional writing)
Labeling diagrams for science like this spider diagram.
Adding labels to photos such as this Parts of a bookseries by Hey Milly.
To share information about a group of kids as in this example from Summerland School.
Flickr for Digital Storytelling
While the note feature above allows for digital storytelling, you can also have a series of images to tell a story using Flickr. There are a number of dedicated sites on Flickr for this type of storytelling. Not all the groups on Flickr set up for Digital Storytelling are designed for education but Hey Milly has added one specifically for kids to use. The examples below are from her 'tell a story in five frames' group.
I would certainly be able to incorporate some of the above ideas into my classroom, especially considering the fact that the classroom where I'm currently doing my placement has an interactive white board, which further expands the usability of Flickr. The only idea I would not use is the one where you can use Flickr to provide information about learners. I feel that Flickr, or any other weblication for that matter, should never reveal information about learners. The privacy and safety of learners need to be of utmost importance to teachers, and they should therefore think twice before posting photos or information of students online.
Resources/References
Jakes, D. (2010). Using Flickr in the classroom. Retrieved online, August 25th, 2010, from
A fascinating TED talk by Jonathan Klein on Photos that changed the world.
As Klein contends here in this video clip, "images can be a snapshot of history". Living in the information era, we now have instant access to images and video's from literally anywhere on earth, or, in some cases even space. This gives us unlimited insight into not only "history", but the various "histories", or present-day stories, that define cultures and communities across our world today.
In the light of this fact, 21st century learners are privileged to have wide exposure to the various forms of visual communication as it relates to many cultural contexts around the globe. They are expected to make meaning and make use of visual communication in their daily language to a greater extent than any of the previous generations. Dealing with the syntax and semantics of visual literacy is therefore a critical element to every school's curriculum, and teachers are to continually integrate this throughout all learning areas.
Some of the tools most useful for this process are found on the internet:
Through this website, users can upload photos and combine it with text to create a story. This is easily embedded into other websites, and specifically designed for easy printing.
As part of my e-learning course I was required to investigate a web-tool calledPrezi. On first impressions, it seemed like the creators of Prezi has taken their friend PowerPoint to the Theme Park and put him on a roller coaster. Words criss-cross the screen and tilt, zoom, spin, pan and hang, and may leave those prone to sea-sickness a little pale around the edges. It left me wondering whether the name was deliberately chosen to represent the collation of the words "presentation" and "dizzy", or if that was merely ironic coincidence.
All that aside, I thought it to be a nifty device if used creatively in the classroom. I created an extremely basic Prezi (see below) which I intend to use in my year 1 classroom. It is easy to use and has a very appealing and unique design interface. Prezi certainly appeals to lateral thinkers and especially visual-spacial learners, since it does not confine the data to a slide-square like PowerPoint, but is capable of laying it out on an infinitely large space .
However, if it is just going to be another educational fad which masks ineffective pedagogy through clever visuals, it will not contribute to learner success.
