Week 6 ~ Movie Making

Today’s blog brings us on to week 6 of our digital technologies module and I can’t believe we are half way through it already!! As you can see from the image above this weeks blog is based on the new topic of movie making. Movie making was not something I had personally came across before so this session really gave me the opportunity to challenge myself in something new.

According to the Scottish Government, it has been show than all forms of digital resources used within the classroom can help to raise the rate of which the pupils work at in certain areas of the curriculum such as maths or science for example (Scottish Government,2015). It has also been proven that digital technologies as a whole can benefit ways of teaching as these technologies have created new ways to raise attainment for pupils within your classroom.

When looking at digital technologies as a whole again we need to be aware and recognise that not everyone within the class is used to having all this technology within their homes. Sometimes we have to consider the possible barriers we could create within the classroom by depending on digital technology for a lot of the resources we use as a class.

As teachers we need to be aware of the consequences pupils can come across when using online games for a certain period of time. It is our job to ensure that pupils are aware of these consequences and how to deal with situations they have came across whilst playing these games.

Our focus for our movie making project was to create a short movie including all the positive and negatives of online resources or online games. This week is all to do with E-safety and how we protect our younger generations from these kinds of dangers.

Agreeing with Beauchamp, in the case that we shouldn’t completely disagree with online resources and games and stop children from using such things, it is our job to be able to educate them into doing what is right and how to deal with situations they aren’t comfortable in (Beauchamp,2012,p.58).

Imovie is a great opportunity for groups  of pupils to work together within a group to create a finished project of a certain topic area. Imovie can benefit children in numerous way, for example, they can gain:

  • Digital technology skills
  • Literacy skills
  • Problem solving skills
  • Teamwork
  • Creativity
  • Health and wellbeing

Going back to my view earlier on, I do believe that todays generation is getting sucked into all this gaming and online use of resources. As a student teacher I am aware of what dangers there are online for our pupils and I feel like it is absolutely necessary that we as teachers are able to identify these dangers and be able to send a message across to the pupils of our classroom about how dangerous these online dangers actually can be. Online games such as Fortnite can be both positive and negative for pupils learning.

After doing some further research after todays session I have came across some disadvantages that online gaming and online resources can create for our pupils. It has been established that the use of the internet can affect our social skills and we are becoming used to talking to everyone online rather than in a real life situation. It is also affecting our pupils health and wellbeing as they are just online playing games on their playstations or xboxs rather than playing outside with their friends (Bridges of Hope, 2017).

This is why my group decided to stream our focus on the advantages and disadvantages of the online game “Fortnite”. Our Imovie was based on the dangers Fortnite can have for younger generations. Our main ideas that we focused on were:

  • Gaming
  • Speaking to people you possibly don’t know
  • No personal information- all you have is an avatar as a picture
  • “Internet Friends”
  • How do we actually block people we don’t know
  • Age restrictions
  • Banking issues (Vbucks)

We created the video to show pupils the negatives of online gaming followed by how we can turn these negatives into positives. The video was created as if someone was actually playing Fortnite and we identified certain things that could make the players came more safe and beneficial. It was hard working in a group for this task as I personally felt that more people worked harder than others. Myself included in that as I felt at certain times I felt quite unsure of the whole Fortnite game as I have never used before therefore it was quite hard for me to put my ideas across of a topic I didn’t really have much knowledge on.

The Imovie allowed us to show pupils how to keep themselves right whilst playing online. It showed them how to keep themselves safe by ensuring their passwords weren’t personal and kept it private, to only accept friend requests from people they knew, how to block people and to ensure to ask an adult first before buying any online merchandise. Here is my groups video posted below. You can have a look at how Imovie allowed us to bring our creativity together and create a great movie on how to be safer on the internet!

I would definitely use movie making within my classroom as this was such a fun session to do today and it also allows pupils to come together as a group and come up with some great ideas and test their creativity. It is an opportunity for children to do something fun as a team but develop new skills and learn at the same time!

REFERENCE LIST

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

How the Internet Affects Students Performance and Behaviour (2017). [Online] Available: http://bridgesofhope.com.ph/index.php/internet-affects-student-performance-behavior/  [Accessed: 26 March 2019]

The Scottish Government (2015) Literature Review on the impact of Digital Technology on Learning and Teaching.

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