Digital Technologies – Rebecca's Reflective Journal

Nintendo DSI

On the 7th of March within our digital technologies lesson we worked with Nintendo DSI’s to create our own lesson within the classroom for children.

Before doing our task we were given time to explore the camera, flip note and Pictochat. Working in groups we had to create a fun, interactive activity using the DSI console. For this task we had several success criteria that we were to meet such as ‘I can explore a Nintendo DSI console’, ‘I can record and manipulate my voice using Nintendo sound icon’, ‘I can communicate with my group using Pictochat icon’ and ‘I can create an animation using flipnote icon’. We chose to do a literacy activity and our learning intention for this task was ‘we are learning to describe characters.’

First of all for our literacy activity, we decided we would split the class into small groups, and each group would create their own character using the camera or flip note. After this the children could all come together to show one another the various characters where they could pick the best character. The children could then all write their own short stories on the chosen character.

Prior to writing a short story based on the characters, teachers could integrate adjectives into the lesson and nouns which will help progression towards producing their own short stories and will result in a greater understanding and ability within literacy. We made links to Curriculum for excellence experiences and outcomes for this task which can be seen below –

LIT 0-21b – As I play and learn, I enjoy exploring interesting materials for writing and different ways of recording my experiences and feelings, ideas and information.

TCH 0-04b – I enjoy taking photographs or recording sound and images to represent my experiences and the world around me.

For most children digital technology is linked to play, entertainment and keeping in touch with friends. The Children’s Parliament states the most common reasons for the use of digital literacy in children were linked to communication with others, chatting and messaging through apps such as Instagram, Snapchat, WhatsApp and Facetime which were all mentioned by children. Some children are also reading using devices such as a Kindle.

For children where digital technology is seen as enhancing learning, this was seen as having the ability to make learning more fun or engaging with the capacity to make better links within both the learning in the classroom and work that is completed at home. Many children also thought that having the opportunity to use iPads or other classroom technology should be seen as the normal thing to do within the classroom, and not just something offered as a reward or part of Golden Time when children are behaving. Therefore, children are starting to see iPads and other devices as contributing to their learning experience. This is due to them believing that this shouldn’t just be something they achieve due to good behaviour but more something that contributes to daily learning within the classroom.

Creating eBooks

In digital technologies on the 28th of February we learned how to make eBooks. We adapted this task on the iPad to something that we could use within the classroom when teaching children. We looked at Roald Dahl books and had to summarise them, we chose ‘The Magic Finger’ as our book. When I was younger I read several Roald Dahl books, however I don’t recognise this book so it was good to study a book that isn’t familiar.

We made links to the Curriculum for excellence experience and outcomes which could be used within teaching in the classroom, these can be seen below –

LIT-0-14a – I use signs, books or other texts to find useful or interesting information and I use this to plan, make choices or learn new things.

LIT 1-14a – Using what I know about the features of different types of texts, I can find, select, sort and use information for a specific purpose.

TCH 0-03a – I explore software and use what I learn to solve problems and present my ideas, thoughts, or information.

The Book creator app is an easy way to make personal ebooks using iPads whether at home or in school. Book creator is essential for making various kinds of books especially children picture books, photo books, comic books, textbooks and many others. The Oxford dictionary refer to an eBook as “An electronic version of a printed book which can be read on a computer or a specifically designed handheld device.”

The Scottish Government outline that within a digital learning and teaching strategy for Scotland it should be structured around four important objectives. These are to develop the skills and confidence of teachers, making sure that digital technology is a central thought in all aspects of curriculum and assessments. Making improvements to how learners can access digital technologies. Lastly, empowering leaders of change to drive forth innovation and investment in digital technology within learning and teaching. If these four main objects are used properly and effectively, digital technology can increase learning and teaching in all parts of Curriculum for Excellence; preparing all learners with fundamental digital skills which would lead to improved educational outcomes also.

iStopmotion app to create an animation

On Tuesday the 14th of February in Digital Technoligies we created an animation for internet safety aimed at children to help them stay safe online. We used the app iStop motion to create our short animation and we used a fairytale theme. We decided on this theme as we thought it would relate well with children and make them more interested in listening to the main message we wanted to portray about internet safety.

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This app allows for a sequence of photos to play at a high speed, usually at 25 frames per second. With iStopmotion on the iPad it allows for individuals to easily create their own videos at home. When using iStop movie we included a background song, and took multiple pictures for the different events that happened throughout the story. We used our mobile phones to show the conversation between the princess and who she thought was prince charming. This was to reinforce the importance of online safety on social media for children.

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When the princess finally met up with her prince charming, she was shocked and scared to realise that it was not her prince charming but a big bad dragon. We chose to do this as this also reinforces to children that not everybody is who they say they are online and encourages them to be more wary and careful when using social media. Even though, this story line is a fantasy and it would not happen like this in real life, our main aim was to emphasise that people may think their speaking to someone good (prince charming) but in reality it turns out to be a bad person (dragon) who never had good intentions in the beginning.

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During this task we made links to Curriculum for Excellence experiences and outcomes which can be seen below.

Mental and Emotional Wellbeing (HWB 0-01a) – I am aware of and able to express my feelings and I am developing the ability to talk about them.

Listening and Talking (LIT 0-01c) – I enjoy exploring events and characters in stories and other texts, sharing my thoughts in different ways.

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“Digital storytelling begins with the notion that in the not too distant future, sharing one’s story through the multiple mediums of digital imagery, text, voice, sound, music, video and animation will be the principle hobby of the worlds people.” Porter,B,. (2004) Digi Tales: The Art of Telling Digital Stories. This therefore emphasises the great importance of digital storytelling within education as it allows for individuals to use various mediums throughout their learning to raise attainment levels.

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There are many transferable skills which can be developed within individuals when working with digital literacy, which are creativity skills, effective communication skills, collaborative skills and many more and so it is very important that digital literacy is included into class lessons to provide children with these essential skills.

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Maintaining a professional reputation

Within digital technologies on the 7th of February I looked at documents which gave detailed information on how teachers can maintain their professional reputation. Many teachers and professionals use social media networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook to contact their friends and family around the world. However, it is very important that they are careful on social media so as to keep their job safe and the young people they teach. On these social networking sites, it is not a great idea to accept friend requests on personal accounts from pupils recently taught, pupils or parents at the school their working at.

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If professional people accept these requests then they are making themselves very vulnerable as they will be allowing others to access their personal information which could be shared by many people. Teachers would then be opening themselves up to accusations of inappropriate contact and may even be exposed as an unwanted contact. However, some teachers do choose to use Facebook or any other social networking site to contact and communicate with their pupils whether it be for topic work or homework support. This is a very quick, and useful way for communication but teachers do have to be wary of the minimum age that can access the website.

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Teachers should always think very carefully about the posts they share and before posting any posts, updating status’ or having a conversation which relates to the school, parents, pupils which could get a teacher into a very bad situation. Other features of social media such as profile pictures, cover photos or when joining groups or liking things is something else teachers have to be extremely aware of as features like this can reveal a lot about the teachers choices or opinions towards a particular subject.

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Many social networking sites have an age requirement of thirteen years old and so within a primary school, the most likely approach would be not to introduce children to these social networking sites or to use them to contribute to learning. In many schools, social networking sites are blocked so that children cannot access them on computers. However, there are some potential benefits to using social networking sites within education and with well thought out lesson planning they can be used with responsibility. This would give the teacher the opportunity to make essential lessons which could result in collaborative learning for all children.

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Importance of internet safety

On the 7th of February within digital technologies we learned more about how to stay safe online as it’s safer internet day to help children realise the dangers online. Safe Internet Day use the slogan – ‘Be the change: Unite for a better internet.’ Not only do children have to stay safe online, adults also do. An example of this would be teachers as they have to keep a professional reputation. Many teachers and other professionals use social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook to contact family members or friends. However, it is important that they do not accept friend requests on personal accounts as this could result in a very negative result.

It is very important that within teaching, children are given rules towards how to stay safe online and scenarios to help them understand and think more about risky situations they could get themselves into. A scenario that could be asked by a teacher could be ‘if this was to happen, what would you do?’. Children should be taught that before posting pictures that they have to be very aware of the privacy and audience.

internet-safety-for-kids Children should be educated that from their pictures, it is very easy for personal information to be leaked to the internet which would result in massive risks. The individuals within the school need to understand that posting pictures in school uniform can give information of what age the individual may be and what school they go to. This could pose as a big threat to the individual(s) as this gives others direct access to where they will be before the school day and after.

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Children also need to be taught that posting pictures of street names could result in a negative outcome as this will release information as to where they live and so the individual is much more vulnerable. Within schools, teachers should ask children how they can make sure they are sharing photos safely online. This could be done by the teacher instructing the children to stop, think and ask themselves questions before sharing the photo.

There are important questions all children should have the opportunity to think about before they post pictures online. These could include questions such as; who else will be able to access the photo that has been shared, who is the photo being shared with, what personal information will be taken from the photo and lastly what information will people find out about other individuals in the photos. This is why the use of rules and scenarios are extremely beneficial when teaching children about the importance of internet safety. They allow them to think about the possible risks and outcomes they may experience online if they do not follow these strategies or rules.

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Using Scratch Jr as a programming language – Rebecca McNish

On Tuesday the 31st of January during the digital technologies lesson, our assessment task was to create a set of instructions for teachers based on a coding program. The program we looked at was called Scratch Jr which is an introductory programming language which allows young children from ages 5 and onwards to make their own personal collaborative stories and games.

I had the opportunity to work on scratch jr to come up with my own game to help children in the early years by encouraging them to improve on their reading and spelling skills. The theme I chose was a beach theme as everybody loves going on holiday and I thought children would be excited by this and more engaged in learning.

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Within my beach theme, I decided to put in several objects such as a beach ball, a starfish, a sun shine and a boat, on my first screen on scratch I displayed the beach background but made it so the words popped up on the screen for a few seconds. On the second screen of the scratch activity, some letters were missing and so the children were encouraged to think and then to spell out the words and try to guess the missing letters to complete the words.

I provided a set of instructions for a class teacher to help them access scratch such as –

‘Click on the scratch Jr app and select the home icon to access the main section of the app’
‘To create your own project, go to ‘my projects’ page and click on the blank white page with the plus sign on the left hand side’.
‘You can now add your background – do this by clicking on the icon at the top in the centre which consists of the sky and grass’
‘Now select the beach themed background and then you are ready to select your characters!’

I also provided the teacher with a set of instructions on how to add characters into the activity such as –

‘When you first access the screen there will be a cat character automatically there – to remove this click on the button on the left hand side of your screen, a red ‘X’ will appear, click on this to remove it’.

‘To add new characters, click on the icon at the left hand side which is a blank white icon with a plus sign inside a blue circle’.
‘Then select the characters which are best suited to the chosen beach theme’.

Lastly, I gave instructions as to how to navigate the characters around the page such as giving advice about how each of the 6 buttons work throughout navigation such as the YELLOW button which gives you various options about the starting point of the character. The BLUE icon with the arrow has various options for the movement of your character. The PINK icon allows you to change the size of your character and allows you to add your own message. The ORANGE icon is for stopping, speeding up or repeating a movement. Also the GREEN icon is for implementing sound into the activity and lastly RED is for ending, repeating or moving between the screens.

There are many benefits and reasons as to why Scratch Jr should be used within classroom lessons today in society. These reasons are based around the idea that Scratch Jr could be the new literacy within society today. By learning code it gives individuals the opportunity to learn strategies which could result in improvements to their problem solving skills, when designing projects and when communicating ideas. Coding is also very important in today’s society as having the ability to code within computer programs would be very beneficial in children’s learning approaches.

Below is a picture of the Scratch Jr game I designed where children had to try and memorise the words from the first screen. They then would have to go through the words and fill in the missing spaces to complete the words. This would result in improvements to their problem solving skills, reading, writing and spelling skills.

Using Bee-Bot

On Monday the 23rd of January, during the digital technologies lesson we made grids related to themes and made links to the Curriculum for Excellence experiences and outcomes across all levels within primary schools. We chose the theme of beaches as we thought it was a good idea because it’s a happy theme and everybody loves going on holiday. Our success criteria during this lesson were to use Bee-Bot to teach skills across many curriculum areas, such as literacy and numeracy. From this task we were successful using Bee-Bot as an example of a programmable toy to come up with various learning approaches that could be adapted into a lesson when we become primary teachers.

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Use of programmable toys such as Bee-Bot within the classroom is extremely important as it gives the children the chance to be in charge of the Bee-Bot. There are also many benefits in including the use of programmable toys within classroom lessons because this can result in the expansion of children’s problem-solving skills and it would provide children with an insight into important cross-curricular links. Pekarova Janka emphasises the importance of programmable toys in the classroom by stating “The curriculum introduces programmable toys as a good example for developing knowledge and understanding of the contemporary world.”

Our beach theme was very fun to work with and we enjoyed being creative and imaginative to adapt the use of programmable toys into possible numeracy lessons. We were successful in this by completing a grid which could provide many different learning approaches for children. Here is a picture of our beach themed grid below –

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Importance of the Interactive Whiteboard within learning

Aside from learning more about Glow on the 10th of January 2017, we also had the chance to learn more about why the use of interactive whiteboards are useful within learning and why there is such a strong emphasis on it today in schools.

The main benefit of using interactive white boards it that it caters for all learners, such as Visual learners as these type of learners will benefit from a straight forward view of what is presented on the board and they learn better by watching videos and looking at pictures. The interactive white board is also very beneficial for kinaesthetic and tactile learners as they benefit from getting the opportunity to touch and move things around the board and like to highlight various elements. Lastly, they also provide benefits in the learning of audio learners as they can be included in class discussions.

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Within the classroom, importance of the interactive whiteboard within learning is emphasised as it is a powerful tool, as it contributes to interactivity and collaboration throughout children’s learning. It is also essential throughout various lessons within schools as it is memorable, informed and captivating and so more children will be enjoying learning and getting more involved.

Using Glow

In the first input for Digital Technologies on the 10th of January 2017, we learned more about Glow and why it is so useful for children, teachers and parents today as it provides a safe online environment. This is because Glow is a fantastic tool for us to access resources anytime and anywhere in the world. Glow provides the opportunity to create blogs and allows for teachers to have a space to create personalised programmes of work for pupils.

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We explored different apps within Glow such as ‘tigtag’ and ‘Glow Tv’ and we had to decide on what age group these would be best suited for and what type of lesson they would be integrated into. Within the first app I looked at ‘tigtag’ I thought it would have been suitable for children aged from 4 to 7 as there were various videos which were quite basic but enjoyable. There were also options of science lessons to do with physics, biology and chemistry to suit children’s interest. I think using ‘tigtag’ in the classroom during a lesson would be beneficial as it gives options of first and second level and will give children the opportunity to experience a more interactive learning approach. The second app I looked at which was ‘Glow tv’ provided many different subjects such as history, drama, and drawing. It allows you watch things live, record content to allow you to watch at a later stage, you can refine the search suited to you and there are links to classroom topic work and real life experiences.

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Lastly, I learned that within a class room one of the main focuses is about ‘closing the gap’ between the variation of attainment levels. Therefore, Glow could really contribute to closing this gap as use of Glow has the ability to engage learners and could contribute to raising attainment and achievement levels across many schools in Scotland. Education Scotland emphasises the importance of digital technologies within learning as it is stated “place digital technologies at the heart of learning.” (Armstrong, 2015).