Week 4 - Digital Videos

Week 4 is all about Multimedia, and whilst I can see how the Group 2 digital tools of images and podcasts can enhance student learning, I believe digital videos provide the greatest platform for fostering critical thinking, research skills, problem solving, visual literacy skills, creativity and the ability to work in collaboration.

Digital videos enable students to incorporate images, footage, music, text and audio into one polished product that reflects their ideas on a topic. With the world today being saturated in visual media, from billboards on the side of the road, to images in a magazine, to advertisements and movies on our television screens, it is vital that students know how to interpret these visual medias and make meaning from them (aka - Visual Literacy). Producing digital videos themselves, or engaging with ones a teacher has created, drives students to develop visual literacy skills.

Through creating digital videos, students are automatically required to exercise higher order thinking skills because they have to decide on how to make images/footage, text and sound work together to achieve a certain purpose and to make meaning. For example, in an English unit on persuasive texts, instead of having my students create an advertising poster, I would have them create a video advertisement persuading me to buy a particular product (Eg: Hamburger).

To effectively persuade me to buy their product, the students would have to think carefully about a lot of different aspects in relation to their video. What camera angle will they use to ensure their hamburger looks enticing to the viewer? (Close up of the beef patty etc.) And what words will be used on the background audio to persuade me to want to eat the hamburger? (Eg: Juicy, succulent meat patty and crisp, fresh lettuce etc). A lot of critical thinking is needed to create a video advertisement that effectively persuades an audience.

For lower primary, digital videos can be used as a tool for 'digital storytelling'. Digital storytelling is basically where students use images, text, audio and footage to create a digital story in the form of either a personal narrative, a narrative about someone else or an event in history or a set of instructions (please see this website by Bernard Robin for a deeper look at digital storytelling - The Educational Uses of Digital Storytelling).

An example of how I would use digital storytelling with a Year 1 or Year 2 class would be to have them work in groups, using digital cameras, to take photographs of the things they do throughout a school day (Eg: Going to parade, eating lunch, going to Music etc.). With the help of the teacher, the groups could use a program such as Movie Maker (which is readily available on any Windows computer) to construct a simple video of their day at school. This is not only teaching the learners new ICT skills, but is helping them establish the vital literacy skill of being able to sequence events.

I recently had a go at creating my own digital video using Windows Movie Maker and was pleasantly surprised with the results! My video reflects the idea of the personal narrative digital story as it was one I created for my 21st birthday party. It contains a number of still photographs and videos from my childhood to the present day, along with accompanying text and audio files playing in the background.

To finish, I have also constructed a PMI for the use of digital videos in the classroom. As with any digital tool, there are a couple of drawbacks to using digital video and it is important to highlight these. But overall I do hope I have been able to persuade you that digital videos are a fantastic higher order thinking tool that will really get your learners engaging in classroom tasks!

Plus:

The use of digital videos by the teacher to present content allows students to learn through a variety of learning styles (visual, auditory etc.).

Creating videos encourages students to use higher order thinking skills and creativity to make a product that serves a particular purpose (eg: to persuade, to inform, to justify...).

Fosters visual literacy skills in students through requiring them to analyse the best way to use images/footage to convey meaning

The majority of school computers are either Microsoft or Mac based and both of these operating systems automatically come with video making software (Windows Movie Maker or iMovie)

Collaborative learning skills, communication skills, presentation skills and organisational skills are all exercised through making digital videos

Minus:

Making video presentations takes a substantial amount of time and this may jeopardise learning in other KLAs

Movie Maker and iMovie can sometimes be difficult tools to operate for beginner students and thus this will require a lot of teacher attention

Digital video software can sometimes take a long time to buffer and render a completed video presentation

Interesting:

Digital videos can be used for learning across all KLAs. Please see one of my previous blog posts for a great way to use digital videoing as part of a Year 5 History unit on the Australian Gold Rush - Week 1 Reflections on Prensky (it is at the end of the post!).

Thanks everyone :) Talk soon!

Sarah

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Image Acknowledgement:

Hamburger - http://www.flickr.com/photos/26777958@N05/3070041561/

Child Using Digital Camera - http://www.photoreview.com.au/tips/buying/Buying-Cameras-for-Children