As part of our digital technologies module we are focussing on the potential of mobile devices in the classroom. Today we were looking at using apps to create our own E-Books, particularly Book Creator, and this allowed me to consider the many ways that these apps could be used across the curriculum. We focussed on summarising a book and using pictures and sound effects as well as videos to make the book engaging and interactive. This could be a good way to introduce learners to the app before they use it to create stories of their own or to make factual books or journals. It could also be a good way to test children’s knowledge of a book which the class have been reading together.
Technologies such as this do not only provide us with opportunities to create items of the future, but they also provide educators and learners with choice. By giving learners choice they are more likely to engage in the activity in hand and to take from it what they need. David Andrews discusses his love for mobile devices as a classroom resource in his article in The Guardian ‘An Apple for the Teacher: are iPads the future in class?’. He wanted to make sure that bringing iPads into his school would be beneficial and would be able to do more than laptops. He found that iPads cannot replace some aspects of laptops but they can offer different apps and interesting features which cannot be so easily accessed through laptops. He argues that one of the main pros of iPads is the opportunity they provide for creativity and he states that he will not use mobile technologies in his classroom if they are not enhancing the learning of his pupils. I believe that this point is extremely important as mobile technologies should not be used to allow learners in the classroom to have fun but not actually learn anything; it is important that we keep the purpose of the use of these technologies in mind. The education secretary of 2012, Mike Russel showed his agreement with this point as he discussed his wishes to ’embed’ these mobile technologies into lessons.
I personally feel that another benefit of these mobile technologies is that they can be taken with learners and moved around easily and freely, allowing them to capture moments outwith the classroom and really allowing their imaginations to run free. It also provides them with the option, should they have an iPad or tablet at home, to download apps such as this for themselves and to continue learning skills in this fun and engaging way at home. This supports the Scottish Government incentive to make parents and carers more aware of the opportunities of using digital technologies to enhance learning all of the time – not just in the classroom, as well as possibly reducing many parents’ views of technology as mind numbing and helping them to see its potential as mind blowing! I also believe very strongly that most learners would view use of mobile technologies such as creating an E-Book as a much more exciting homework task than writing things on a blank A4 sheet of paper.
Furthermore, through use of a digital E-Book, learners are exposed to the importance of editing their work and are allowed to do this very easily. They can move things around, change sentences without making a mess and it allows them to build on what they have rather than to start again every time they want to edit their work, making sure that they all have a better chance of producing work which represents the best of their ability.
Finally, as discussed in ‘A Digital Learning and Teaching Strategy for Scotland: The Views of Children’, a report carried out by the Scottish Government in 2016, many children are currently interested in YouTube and are creating their own videos to post on there. This may well have stemmed from the recent love of ‘vloggers’. Most of these vloggers vlog about their everyday lives, often doing tutorials for things such as makeup and games and many children are following on by doing the same as their new found idols. If this interest was to be captured by myself as a teacher and if learners were presented with the possibility of creating vlogs, just like their favourite vloggers, which could be used to test their knowledge through the creation of a tutorial for their own mathematical strategies or through creation of a character who is from another country and is discussing what his or her life is like there, they may become a lot more interested than if I was to tell them to write these things down on paper. These vlogs could then be organised and used as part of E-Books as learners can create links for them, allowing their E-Books to be made completely of their own valuable materials and to be completely interactive for them and for the people who are reading them.
Overall, it is fair to say that by creating E-Books learners are made to feel like true authors and are presented with various different learning possibilities, as well as the possibility of choosing to take their learning beyond the classroom because they are truly enjoying it!
