Multi media tools...the noise, the imagery, the learning.

Group 2 tools - Images, audio and video

Video;Using movie maker in educational contexts.

Here is a short movie that my daughter took for her show and tell in year 2 when they were doing a unit on camping. While I helped her produce this movie in y capacity as a mother rather than an educator, I have reflected on it anew during this weeks consideration of digital tools. The brief for the show and tell was to bring in photos of your camping experiences to share with the class. Having seen what movie maker was capable of I asked Delphi is she would like to use it to produce a movie instead of printing photos out. Being quite new to how it worked I found the easiest way to produce the movie was to collaborate on the design. In this way my daughter selected the colours, font, transitions and even chose the soundtrack. I then helped her to manipulate the images into the sequence and publish the movie to a disc. We do not own the rights to the music - It is credited at the end of the movie. It is "Countryside" by Empire of the Sun.
Had we had more time I would have liked my daughter to be able to play with this program more herself, she was engaged with the use of it and after the show and tell her teacher and class followed up with more 'movie' show and tell productions. This worked well due to the smartboard technology that was available.

This is just one way movie maker can be used, and probably a fairly old fashioned way! I'd love to investigate making other types of movies and using digital video as well. The technology is so wonderfully able to be manipulated and then used in many configurations, enhancing creativity by being able to be combined with other programs such as using PowerPoint slides to create images that can then be used to make stop motion animation.
The other consideration is time. I've spent hours fiddling with embed codes and asking Google lots of questions regarding how to put a video into my blog. Who knew that it was as simple as clicking on the insert video link in the editor box! A few false starts but here's hoping it is working now.



Mobile Learning
Also in this weeks resources was a reference to mobile learning. Mobile learning refers to the use of tools such as ipods, ipads and smartphones which are capable of being 'mobile' computers. These devices offer up ways for learning to be 'on the go'. Statistics and trends show the ownership of devices such as these is steadily on the rise. This therefore is an area where the tech savvy learning manager can also look at developing their pedagogy. One way of using mobile learning is through simple polls such as the one I developed asking for opinions on mobile phones in classrooms. In this way student responses could be collected by learning managers as an initial assessment or formatively throughout a learning experience. Similarly it could be used to develop classroom climate by providing students with a platform to 'have a say' on things including choices for classroom management.



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