Week 5 now of our digital technologies module and our session introduced a new topic to me which are known as Ebooks.

The Oxford Dictionary defines ebooks as “an electronic version of a printed book which can be read on a computer of a specifically designed handheld device”(BBC,2012).

Ebooks is a great opportunity for pupils to engage with literacy through a wider range of different texts.

This texts may include:

~ novels, short stories, plays,poems

~ CVs, letter and emails

~ labels, signs and posters

~ text messages, blogs and web pages

According to Jarvis, eBooks have so many more technological features that media such as newspapers or books will never have (Jarvis,2015,p.146-7). Ebooks are a great idea as for pupils they are small and easy to move around as the devices they have been created on are portable. From a teachers point of view Ebooks would be beneficial in the classroom as they would be able to use in a variety of different areas and environments.

Ebooks link closely with Beauchamps point of view on personalisation. ICT gives pupils an opportunity to express their feelings in a different range of ways. Ebooks gives pupils the opportunity to jot down new ideas and add sounds or music to bring it more to life(Beauchamp,2012,p.101).

Ebooks allows pupil a chance to change a text up by adding different pictures or how the pages go in order and how the text is set out(Jones and Hafner,2012,p.12).

In comparison to multimodal texts, Ebooks falls under the category of a multimodal text which can be digital.

Todays task was to recreate a children’s book and bring it to life putting your own spin on it. We had to use the book creator app and was a very simple way to make our very own ebook from scratch using the iPad.

We focussed on the book we’re going on a bear hunt. We thought this was a great book to focus on as a lot of children would be familiar with the book and also there were so many adventures to go on so it gave us more scope for creating our pages and gave us so many ideas!

Using book creator we :

~ Kept the original characters by adding images from online

~ Made the background dyslexic friendly

~ Kept original text

~ Recorded sounds from YouTube and had a good catchy song repeated all the way through

Our Ebook allowed children to be interactive as throughout the book we were asking children to join in and do the actions along the way on the adventures. At the very end of the book we gave the pupils an opportunity to create their own obstacle for the family to go through and create their own action and sound to go along with it! This allowed pupils to gain the skill of teamwork as they would have to come together to create a new page for the book.

Difficulties that I came across through using  Ebooks were that when recording any sounds the classroom was too noisy. So for future use of using ebooks, I will find a quieter area before recording any sounds.

Benefits I came across on Ebooks were that they were easy to use and the pupils had an opportunity to make it their own giving them the chance to gain new skills such as creativity and problem solving.

I would definitely use ebooks within the classroom as it encourages pupils to keep reading rather than focusing on games and internet usage. It also allows them to use their imagination and come up with their own thoughts and ideas rather than just reading books which are already finished. This would give them an opportunity to test their own creativity. Ebooks are also a more engaging form of reading as they allow to add sounds which engages the pupils to find out what’s going to happen next!

I cant wait to use Ebooks in the future classroom!

REFERENCE LIST

BBC Webwise article [Online] Available: http://www.bbc.co.uk/website/guides/about-ebooks [Accessed: 5 February 2019]

Beauchamp, G. (2012) ICT in the Primary School: From Pedagogy to Practice. Pearson.

Jarvis, M. (2015) Brilliant Ideas for Using ICT in the Classroom: A Very Practical Guide for Teachers and Lecturers. Routledge

Jones, R.H. and Hafner, C.A. (2012) Understanding Digital Literacies: A Practical Introduction. Routledge.

 

 

We are now on week 4 of our digital technologies module and today we were beginning to develop and understand the benefits of Coding for younger pupils and how this will enhance their academic learning within the class.

Coding can bring many benefits for pupils in a classroom and these benefits are things such as gaining new important strategies such as problem solving when creating codes and making sure that they work together and also communicating their ideas to one another when creating their stories or the programming for the characters.

Coding also allows teachers to combine subjects such as math and literacy together into one lesson. This is beneficial as students who might not particularly enjoy maths for example could be doing maths by using coding apps but actually enjoying it and being fully engaged in it as the coding activity is more engaging and enjoyable than a normal maths lesson (Williams,2017). This is a positive aspect of coding as it allows teachers to continue to enhance children’s learning through a variety of different resources and the pupils are also benefiting for this as well as they are being introduced to new skills which could be of use in the future world of work.

In this weeks session, we had a key focus on operating Scratch Jr. Scratch Jr allows pupils aged 5 and up to create their own coding stories and games. The programme allows children to do thing such as:

• Select a background
• Add a character
• Change the colour of the character
• Move the character
• Add audio
• Add new slides

Scratch alongside coding is very beneficial for pupils as it allows their academic learning to expand.It gives them the opportunity to engage with new forms of technology and be involved in a new experience of learning as it is not just written text that pupils are involved with now. Scratch allows pupils to be very hands on as creating new codes and activities allows them to think outside the box, develop their creativity and take part in an activity they have not particularly been introduced to (Lucas,2017). This app is also beneficial for teachers to introduce to their classes as it encourages teamwork and communication skills as pupils are able to work with other people within the class.

From my own personal experience , I have only came across scratch within high school ICT lessons. At the time I wasn’t a big fan of scratch as it was quite technological and required a lot of patience in order to make your programme work properly. After this weeks session my opinion of scratch has changed dramatically as I was able to identify and analyse how scratch is very beneficial for pupils to encounter a new form of learning.

Working with scratch Jnr I was able to test my own creativity skills and develop my very own scratch story based on a classroom adventure. I started with 4 basic backgrounds such as a classroom, a city, a farm and a beach. This gave me an opportunity to take the children through different recognisable areas of town.

 

                                                           

The whole aim of the scratch project was for pupils to go through all four areas and identify familiar sounds that they could see within the area they were in. For example, within the city background I had added a car for the pupils to identify the sound of C-A-R. I had researched some Experiences and Outcomes from the Curriculum for Excellence which I though tied in quite nicely with my project.

I paid close attention to two literacy ones for early level of learning. These were :

LIT 0-11B ~ I enjoy exploring and choosing stories and other texts to watch, read or listen to, and can share my likes  and dislikes

LIT 0-21A~ I explore sounds, letters and words,discovering how they work together and I can use what I learn to        help me as I read or write

However, one weakness I had been struggling with in regards to scratch was that it was quite fidgety and was hard to work around with. I  especially found this when using the classroom background as it was hard to get all the characters to move at the same time as each other and was becoming quite frustrating.

If I am going to continue to use scratch within the classroom, this would definitely be area I would need to continue to develop as I found it difficult to make it all go in time.

REFERENCE LIST  

 

Lucas, J. (2017) Coding in the primary classroom.[Online] Available: https://www.educationalappstore.com/blog/coding-primary-classroom-scratch/ [Accessed: 29 January 2019]

 

Williams, J. (2017) 10 Surprising skills kids learn in the classroom.[Online]Available: https://www.weareteachers.com/skills-learn-coding/ [Accessed: 5 February 2019]