Introduction
Week 6 of digital technologies focussed on movie making. We used an app called iMovie on the iPads and were to create a story surrounding the topic of internet safety. Technology and in particular the internet are becoming a huge part of our everyday lives and the majority of people we will be teaching in primary schools will be digital natives (Prensky, 2001). So, it is vital we are taught how to stay safe on the internet as this can be an extremely dangerous place if used incorrectly. I was quite excited to work with iMovie as I thought it would be something really enjoyable to create. However, I was quite apprehensive with the topic as it is something extremely important to keep child friendly but also make sure they are aware of risks.
The Task
For this task I worked in a group of 5 people. We found it difficult to find something to focus our movie on as internet safety incorporates so much so we created a mind map to try and get some ideas together. In the end we decided to base our story on the idea of catfishing. We created a plan so that we knew exactly what we needed to film so therefore would become more productive.
Our Story Plan
Our movie started off having Chloe scrolling through her Instagram and then posting a photo while sharing her location. After this we had Ross looking through Chloe’s Instagram and screenshotting her pictures. He then created a fake account pretending to be Chloe. He then messaged me as Chloe and told me that she had created a new account and asked if I wanted to meet up. I ended up meeting up with him and realising that it was not actually Chloe. We then ended our video with key points of how to stay safe on the internet.
We would use this at primary 6-7 as it is quite a mature topic. The experience and outcome we choose to tie this in with was “I can explore online communities demonstrating an understanding of responsible digital behaviour and I’m aware of how to keep myself safe and secure.” TCH 2-03a.
Although I was very wary with focusing on a topic that needs to be both child friendly and still be realistic about scary side of the internet, I was really happy with the end product. It turned out much better than I thought it would. I think this would be a great task for children as it’s a different way to teach internet safety. by creating their own story it can help them to understand the consequences of not keeping safe on the internet better than reading through a website/text book or doing a worksheet.
iMovie Uses and Skills
iMovie does not just have to be used for internet safety, there are so many different ways it can be used. For example, it can be used in literacy as a different way to tell a story, it can be used to film a debate and show the two different sides and it can also be used to tell stories of different historical events or people.
iMovie helps to develop so many skills. While we were creating our movie, we took note of the different skills we used.
- Listening
- Working with Others
- Talking
- Creativity
- Drama/Acting
- Problem Solving
- Research
- Literacy
There are so many more skills that can be developed through the use of this. This app is such a good creative outlet for people to use and allows you to learn in a different way than would be typically be used. It gives children a new way to learn about storytelling as it doesn’t have to be all written down, the majority of the work will be created on the app itself. This will be very empowering for children who have great ideas for stories but find it hard to transmit them to paper. I definitely believe children would enjoy using this in the classroom and I would definitely consider using this in the future.
Internet Safety
Internet Safety is incredibly important for children to know because so many young children put so much of their lives on social media, so they need to be aware of how to be safe and know when something has gone wrong. Beauchamp believes that we should focus on educating children on this rather than stopping them for accessing the internet and social media (Beauchamp, 2012). I fully agree with this as we need to forget our biases about whether or not children should have these platforms, as no matter what we say they will still have them and teach them about how they can be as safe as possible. Beauchamp also tells us we need to children to know what to do in case something actually does go wrong. This is extremely important so that if something does go wrong, they know exactly what to do and how to deal with it rather that it getting worse.
The key ideas we came up with for our movie were:
- To keep all accounts private
- Do not add people you do not know
- Do not share personal information e.g. phone number or address
- Do not share your location
- When in doubt tell an adult
Overall, I believe internet safety is crucial to teach children especially as we are now relaying heavily on the internet and technology.
Conclusion
The use of iMovie is incredibly useful and is an important tool to utilise for any topic. I believe our task highlighted some dangers of the internet while still staying child friendly. However, if I were to teach this topic in schools I think I would rather use a premade video from a reliable website as it may be better quality and will get the point across better. Instead I may ask the children to create their own movie on the topic of internet safety. Internet safety is important to teach in the right way so that children stay interested and follow the rules to stay safe online. In addition, it must be taught in schools, so that children are aware of the dangers and know what to do if anything bad happens.
References
- Prensky, M. (2001) Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants Part 1. On the Horizon. [Online] Vol.9(5), pp.1-6. Available: Emerald Management 111. [Accessed: 19 February 2019].
- Beauchamp, G. (2012) ICT in the Primary Classroom: From Pedagogy top Practice. Pearson.
