WEEK 6 – 12th February 2019

Social media has become a massive aspect of day to day life for many people. Therefore, it is essential that at a young age children are informed about internet safety. “Most primary schools will have in place a policy regarding e-safety, but they are likely to reflect official policies and perhaps not the reality of pupils lives.” (Beauchamp, 2012, p.58) Within the primary school, the key idea is that e-safety is not about restricting children, but about educating them.” However, it is important to remember that we are not their parents therefore, cannot control if they have access to social media or not. Although we can’t stop our pupils from having social media accounts, what we can do as educators is educate them on what to do if things do go wrong online.

Looking through the sources on Moodle, I noticed a number of sources about internet safety day and online quizzes to take. I think this is useful, as although I have knowledge about e-safety, it is always good to have something to refer to.

Although technology has it down sides, there are many benefits to using technology especially in the classroom. For example, The Scottish Government (2015) stated that there is evidence that the use of digital equipment, where used effectively, can raise the speed and depth of learning. They then go further to state that digital technologies help improve basic literacy and numeracy skills. The Curriculum for Excellence also states the importance of Digital Technologies within the classroom. Digital Technologies like to Health and Wellbeing, Numeracy and Literacy. It states that it helps develop problem solving capabilities in children and helps them engage with a wide range of texts.

In today’s society, we are required more and more to be digitally literate. With applying for jobs online and interacting with friends. Digital literacy includes knowledge, skills and behaviours involving the effective use of digital devices, such as smartphones, tablets, laptops for the purpose of communication, expression, collaboration and advocacy. (Weiss,2017)

Moving on, digital storytelling is seen to be an upcoming feature that will be the principle hobby of the world’s people. It is the sharing of a story through the multiple mediums of digital imagery, text, voice, sound, music, video and animation.

In class, we worked in groups to create an imovie using the ipads. In my group, we decided to focus on the very popular game Fortnite. We paid extra attention to the dangers of the game, including being able to send friend requests to anyone and send them messages. At the beginning, we included a few clips about setting up an account and the importance of not using your name and also making sure your password isn’t easy to guess. After we planned what we wanted to include, we took a wee while to think of a way to present it all that would-be attention grabbing and give the message we wanted to convey clearly. We came to the conclusion of starting the movie off with all the bad points, for example, the person setting up their account using their name and an easy to guess password. We also included a clip of receiving loads of friend requests that the person proceeds to accept. After this, we ask the pupils if there is anything they would change about what they just seen, to which we would hope they would tell us all the points we wanted to make. The next half of our movie is the person going back and recreating the account making it safer. Then to conclude the movie, we included a clip stating that Fornite can be fun, we didn’t want to make it all doom and gloom as it is important to remember that if used safely these sorts of games are good fun.

I think imovie will be a fun feature to bring into the classroom when I am teaching. I really enjoyed the process of planning then putting all the clips together, being able to include sound and text etc. With a bit of practice, I think I would be able to introduce this to pupils and they would also have a positive experience with it.

References:

›Beauchamp, G. (2012) ICT in the Primary Classroom: From Pedagogy top Practice. Pearson.

›The Scottish Government (2015) Literature Review on the Impact of Digital Technology on Learning and Teaching.[Online] http://dera.ioe.ac.uk/24843/1/00489224.pdf[Accessed: 5.2.18]

Weiss, D. (2017) Time to Know blog [Online] https://www.timetoknow.com/blog/essential-digital-literacy-skills-for-the-21st-century-worker/[Accessed: 5.2.18]