Week 10 Post school informal blog.

This blog reflects on the challenge to produce a talking book on Children’s Rights.

Prior to working with the children, our group planned the project through group messaging on Facebook. We discussed elements such as learning objectives, resources, apps and outcomes etc.  This planning was invaluable to a successful outcome, just as Franklin and Stringer (2010) state about the important stages because creative processes in collaborative work for children rely on planning and evaluation.

The children were shy at first, but once we had introduced ourselves and explained our purpose and the project, the children became responsive. On reflection, it would have been easier to have known the children’s capabilities and their personalities beforehand in order to pitch our level of teaching and engagement to the individual learner. Our aim was to incorporate media literacy in to the curriculum by creating an iBook using Book Creator. The children did successfully create an iBook. The children took to the exercise well and behaviour was very good, except on one occasion, in the nurture room where we had gone to in order to use a quiet area as envisaged by (Franklin and Stringer, 2010). During our transition from the T.V. to the floor, two girls were distracted by a dolls house which was next to them. I was just about to intervene and bring them back on task when, another teacher stepped in and did what I was about to do. In a normal situation, preparing the teaching environment in advance, distractions such as a dolls house could be removed. On reflection, it was only for a brief moment and considering the attention span of Year One children, it is expected.

 

Our first learning objective was, by the end of the session, children could in ‘child speak’, tell us ‘Article 15 on Freedom of Association: Children have the right to meet together and to join groups and organisations, as long as this does not stop other people from enjoying their rights’ (Unicef).  One child kept on referring to article 15 as the right to join a gang; I saw this as his limited connection of prior knowledge and him making inference in order to make that connection. A gang can be an innocent friendly group (such as the Famous Five or My Gang by Brian Moses etc.), only modern reference and media gives it the bad image.

 

The second learning objective was, to understand what animation was and to explain the process. The children found it hard to make connection between pictures and animation. Children will have their own ‘preconceived ideas about what animation is from what they have seen at the cinema and watched on television’ (wikispaces, 2014). Animation is the process by which we see still pictures move. Each picture is shot on film one at a time and is shown consecutively, making the pictures appear to move. We had thought about showing flick books (Warner, 2014) as an example of simple animation but time was critical. At the end of the session they were able to describe what animation was.

The third learning objective was, to learn some capacity in using iPads. One function was the drag and drop to delete a picture while in ‘I can animate’ app. I demonstrated the process and then the children copied.

 

‘One thing that is now widely accepted is that blending animated images with narration rather than text is more effective’ (Manroop, 2008). The children included in their iBook, interviews on their understanding of article 15, this exercise involved speaking and listening which is a curriculum requirement. ‘Ainsworth, S. (2008) suggests that there are six levels to understanding learning through animation: expressive; cognitive, motor and perceptual; affective and motivational; strategic; metacognitive; and rhetorical’ (Cited in Manroop, 2014).

 

Other Challenges that I and my peers found were, letting go, giving ownership, letting children make their mistakes. I found adding captions to iMovie hard and I had to seek help. Holding the iPad still, while moving pieces was difficult for the children and I had to hold the camera while they pressed the camera button. In a future lesson I would consider using the iPad mini for this age group and also add a challenge for them to solve the problem of keeping the camera stationary. One change I would have liked would be to have six children instead of five, because I found the numbers were not balanced.

 

Teaching children digital literacy and capacity is, from my work experience, essential. Therefore, in a future lesson I would set aside more time to fully cover techniques, skills and processes, and knowledge to understand the outcome to achieve the objectives that reach the purpose for the intended audience (Franklin and Stringer, 2010).

 

Bibliography

City and County of Swansea Rights Respecting Schools Award (2014) https://swansea-edunet.gov.uk/en/schools/gwyrosydd/Pages/Rights_Respecting_Schools_Award_.aspx (Accessed on: 21/03/2014)

Clioflics (2014) One Teachers Story http://www.cleo.net.uk/resources/displayframe.php?src=321/consultants_resources%2Fteknical%2Fflashideas%2FButtonTemplate2.html (Accessed on: 20/03/2014)

Franklin, J. and Stringer, O. (2010) I Can Animate Teacher’s Book [online] http://teachnet.eu/cmacaulay/files/ICA_Teachers_Book.pdf (Accessed on: 21/03/2014)

Manroop, (2014) http://www.qudos-animations.co.uk/blog/how-can-animation-facilitate-learning/ (Accessed on: 20/03/2014)

Unicef [online] http://www.unicef.org/crc/files/Participation.pdf (Accessed on: 21/03/2014)

Warner, M. (2014)  Animation Ideas http://www.teachingideas.co.uk/ict/animationideas.htm (Accessed on: 20/03/2014)

Wikispaces (2014) https://internet-safety-primary-education.wikispaces.com/animation (Accessed on: 20/03/2014)