For this week’s workshop we were thinking about internet safety as it was Safer Internet Day. We were also exploring how movie making and iMovie can be used in the classroom.
In an ever-expanding digital society, an essential skill required is digital literacy. Being digital literate means that you have the skills and behaviours to use digital technologies like smartphones, tablets and the internet to communicate and learn (Weiss, 2007). Movie making is a great way to introduce digital literacies as it allows children to story tell through different technologies. Porter states:
“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 world’s people.” (Porter, 2004, p.21)
This idea presented by Porter can already be seen by the increase in more and more people creating and posting to YouTube. Introducing children and allowing them to explore movie making in an education setting allows them the experience to learn the skills they would need to prepare them for later life in society. Furthermore, allowing children the opportunity to experience movie making in class means no one is excluded no matter their circumstances outside of school, meeting the Scottish Governments goal of inclusion (Scottish Government, 2016).
Before coming to the workshop, we were to get into groups and think of an idea that we could relate to internet safety. My group and I decided to focus on stranger danger and social media as this is scarily very relevant in today’s society. Our video would be aimed at upper primary school classes as some children will have social media profiles even though they are too young. As educators it is our jobs to best teach and educate children on how to be safe on the internet and not to tell them they should not have it, as Beauchamp states “…the key idea [is] that e-safety is not about restrictingchildren, but about educatingthem.”
(Beauchamp, 2012, p.58).
In the week before my group and I discussed how we would film our movie and came up with a plan. We decided the social media we were going to use was Snapchat as many young people have access, meaning it would be relevant to them. We linked our movie to some of the experience and outcomes from the curriculum to help develop and support their health and wellbeing:
- I know where to get support and help with situations involving abuse and I understand that there are laws which protect me from different kinds of abuse. HWB 3-49b / HWB 4-49b
- I am learning to assess and manage risk, to protect myself and others, and to reduce the potential for harm when possible. HWB 0-16a / HWB 1-16a / HWB 2-16a / HWB 3-16a / HWB 4-16a
In our movie a young 11-year-old girl decides to add someone she doesn’t know to her Snapchat. The boy she added starts talking to her and they become friendly. We brought up the fact a stranger could see her location as she was on Snapmaps and giving away personal information. Eventually the boy asks her to meet her, but she starts to get suspicious and asks her friend for advice. Luckily her friend tells her to let a responsible adult know as it was not safe. To make our movie more interactive we inserted a few frames asking what the “Red Flags” were. This allows for the video to be paused if a teacher wanted to ask children what their thoughts were. Also, at the end we inserted advice on what to do if the children found themselves in this position. We found this very important as a group to add this as it is our job as student teachers to help best educate children to protect themselves online. The advice we used was from a reliable site called ThinkUKnow.
Reflecting back on our movie I am very proud of how it ended up. We had to slightly adapt our original idea as we had to change some settings on Snapchat to allow us to create the characters. We also worked well as a group because we had divided the jobs up and we each knew what we were to do. Luckily a girl in our group had experience with using iMovie so she edited our movie together, however we all got to learn from her as she explained as she went. This demonstrated the benefits of mixed ability groups and learnings off peers. At one point it seemed like we would never finish our filming and I was becoming slightly impatient. I know as a child I would have lost full engagement with the activity because it was quite a lengthy process (and I was an impatient child), this would be something to take into consideration if you knew you had students that liked tasks completed quickly.
The input on iMovie was a very interesting one as I had never used the programme for. However, I was at the onslaught of tonsillitis and feel I was not as engaged and motivated and I could have been, but it is definitely a programme I will revisit and take into consideration on placement.
Sophie
References:
- Beauchamp, G. (2012) ICT in the Primary Classroom: From Pedagogy top Practice. Pearson.
- Porter, B. (2004) Digi Tales: The Art of Telling Digital Stories. Bernajean Porter Publication.
- Scottish Government. (2016) Enhancing Learning And Teaching Through The Use of Digital Technology: A Digital Learning And Teaching Strategy For Scotland. Edinburgh: Scottish Government
- ThinkUKnow Website [Online] – https://www.thinkuknow.co.uk [Accessed: 01 March 2019]
- Weiss, D. (2007) The Essential Elements of Digital Literacy for the 21stCentury Workforce[Online] Available: https://www.timetoknow.com/blog/essential-digital-literacy-skills-for-the-21st-century-worker/[Accessed: 01 March 2019]
