Creating a multimedia presentation for your coursework at UBC is a great way to learn a new digital technology that you might then bring to your practicum class. Rather than relying on an ‘old standard’, consider this as an opportunity to take a risk and/or select a digital technology that might be of interest to your future students! Be sure, as discussed, to think about your objectives before selecting the appropriate digital technology and, remember, technology for creation in the hands of your students is a very powerful thing!
BEd Teacher Candidates (TCs) this year will have opportunities to flex their digital technology muscles by creating presentations for course assignments and by planning ways to engage their own students on practicum in using digital technologies. For example, elementary TCs in many sections of LLED 350 Classroom Discourses will create a multi-media presentation in response to their “Literacy Autobiography Assignment”. This assignment affords TCs the opportunity to develop digital and technological literacy while also sharing a literacy the TC has developed or is developing.
By Xristina la [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], from Wikimedia Commons
It is my hope that TCs see this as not simply an opportunity to learn to develop their own skills as students but will see the potential for incorporating this kind of assignment into their own teaching practices to provide their own students with opportunities to CREATE (rather than simply consuming) as a way to achieve higher order thinking (Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy pictured here)
We also discussed the importance of building digital and media literacy by engaging students in problem solving and peer teaching. It was evident the TCs made the connection between the BC Digital Literacy Framework and the Core Competencies!
The use of Creative Commons images by teachers for their presentations models appropriate copyright and digital citizenship for our students. Unsplash and Pixabay are two of my favourite sources of CC images (no attribution required – though they don’t mind if you buy them a coffee once in awhile!)
Students played with ScribJab – a multilingual book creation application from SFU. Students, in pairs, learned to support each other in developing their understanding of this application and were able to read and create simple multilingual books with audio and text. During that time, students shared their questions and discoveries. In almost all cases, the wisdom in the room was able to answer the burning questions (just as I’ve found when using this approach with even young children…).
Something I hope I was able to convey through modelling is an approach to introducing ‘new’ digital technologies to students in an experiential and playful way. Rather than ‘teaching’ whole class ‘how to’ use a particular technology (and risk losing many of your students to boredom or going over their heads), I have always provided my students (of ALL ages from K through secondary) opportunities to play with a given app or tool for a period of time prior to there being an expectation of actually using it for a given purpose. I find this helps lessen anxiety and affords students the opportunity to learn from and teach one another.My ‘general’ process for this:
- Show the students a very brief example of the technology ‘in action’
- Provide time for the students to play with the technology in pairs or small groups (with the instruction that they may only ask the teacher to help with tech issues – can’t open, won’t boot, etc – for the first 5 to 15 min depending on the complexity of the tech).
- Teacher circulates and invites students to share (or ‘satellite’) their knowledge with others.
- Once students have had exposure to different ways of representing their learning, I strongly recommend providing them with some choice and agency. Providing the choice of medium, from digital to analogue, helps meet the needs of varied learners and supports a Universal Design for Learning approach to planning and teaching.
In my experience, students can and will teach themselves and each other even more complex applications. I followed the above process with a group of grade 1/2 students using Garage Band to learn to create PodCasts. Within about 1/2 hour, all of the students were able to create a file, add loops, add audio and images. After their initial exploration, students storyboarded and created some very informative podcasts about the salmon in our classroom were ready to share with the school!
As a long time elementary teacher, I always try to provide my students with time to ‘play out’ and experiment with any technology – from math manipulative to science equipment to art supplies to digital technologies. Philosophically, I love being able to incorporate the above approach into my co-teaching in the BEd program and hope TCs are reminded to give their own students such opportunities in order to allow them time to co-construct their knowledge and skills! YD
RESOURCES from our session:
Slides from our session in LLED 350 (Sept. 2019)
Digital Storytelling Post by Janis Sawatzky – provides a nice overview of digital storytelling and links to the various applications we introduced in the classroom session and in the followup drop in Scarfe Sandbox ‘PlayShops’ held on Oct. 2, 3, 9th.
