My Podcast & Discussion

Week 4 - Engagement Activity 6

 

My Podcast 

The link below will take you to my Podcast - Mother Hen - Part 2. Don't miss it!

http://5158.podomatic.com/entry/2012-11-22T21_02_50-08_00

Podcast Discussion

  

Podcasting provides students with a modern and exciting way to learn, and to communicate what they have been learning and achieving in school. Families and relatives can stay informed about their children’s education through subscribing to school podcasts, which can also be used as a means through which the school can communicate important information to parents and carers. Also, there is the potential for students to attract a much wider following than those with whom they are familiar, through the internet. Other school children and teachers may be interested in what they are learning, and glean ideas for their own teaching and learning practices. Knowing that their projects are being examined by a wider audience, and being inspired by positive feedback, students may work even harder to find more interesting facts, achieve higher levels of understanding, and stretch the boundaries of their creativity. Children learn to work collaboratively and cooperatively, taking ownership over their productions and learning to problem solve, which utilises higher order thinking skills. To be successful at communicating and accessing knowledge in the twenty-first century, one must be aware of the many different forms of communication. The podcast is growing in popularity due to its ease of use to both access and communicate a wide variety of content. It can be used anywhere, anytime - which suits our busy lives!

Podcasts for the Early Childhood Context

For very young children, a teacher could create a class learning podcast. By uploading educational material for students to access out of school hours, children are provided with the opportunity to consolidate and extend their learning. Such material could include:

 

·                     Kindergarten/Prep Rhymes (for pre-literacy skills)

·                     Kindergarten/Prep Songs (e.g. Heads & Shoulders, Knees & Toes)
·                     Favourite Stories
·                     Number Songs and Rhymes (e.g. Mother Duck Went Out One Day)
·                     Literacy Songs (B-I-N-G-O)
·                     ABC Song
·                     Letter Songs & Stories (e.g. LetterLand, Jolly Phonics)
·                     Fantastic Facts about people, animals, things ...

          
Also, for Years 1-3:

·                     Spelling bees (for grades 1-3)

·                     Quizzes
·                     Problem-solving questions

·            

   
    These could also be utilised within the classroom, with images/photos uploaded to provide a visual component for when a computer or an interactive whiteboard is used.

Computers and whiteboards could also be used to show children educational podcasts sourced from the internet, including those with specific content knowledge, such as podcasts about Grizzly Bears, Marsupials, Photosynthesis etc. Years 2 – 3 students could be encouraged to attempt finding podcasts for themselves on topics of interest, for research purposes.  

In addition to teacher generated or internet podcasts, children could create their own podcasts. While very young children will require teacher assistance, it is still a process that can be discussed and demonstrated so that children are at least exposed to the dialogue/ literacy aspects associated with such technology, which will facilitate later learning of independent technology skills. Young children could contribute by submitting ideas for podcasts, taking photos, and choosing images and artworks, and creating audio recordings for submissions. They could even following teacher instruction to ‘double click here’ and ‘choose this option’ etc.

Suggested topics could include:

·                     What I learned about ... e.g. snails/growing plants/keeping fish

·                     Class Diary
·                     What I want to be when I grow up
·                     My favourite place
·                     My Pet
·                     My Family
·                     Jokes
·                     Class Dictionary - children submit words and create sentences ...
·                     Our Farm Visit
·                     The Firemen's Visit
·                     Mother’s Day greetings – I love my Mummy because ...
·                     Father’s Day greetings – I love my Dad because ...
·                     Easter and Christmas greetings/ performances

     

  Provided children have media releases, they could take part in videos/making movies, creating artworks (e.g. showing procedures), reciting poems, playing instruments, learning a skill from a visiting expert, and so on, which could all be uploaded to their podcast. 

 

My Audio Recording

Week 4 - Engagement Activity 4

 

Audio Recording using Audacity

Please follow the link below to my wiki, where I have placed an example of an audio recording, created using Audacity.


http://fifiselearning.cquniversityschoolofeducation.wikispaces.net/Week+4

Digital Images

 Week 4 - Engagement Activity 1 

Reflection on Re-sizing & Uploading Digital Images

 

Meeting MobaPhoto 

                                                                  

These images have been re-sized, using MobaPhoto, specifically for upload to the internet. MobaPhoto determined the best size for these images to suit this purpose. I was planning to upload the original images to my blog as well, because I wanted to see the difference in quality. However, I soon realised how looooong this process would take - and hence, I learnt my first very valuable lesson about the benefits of re-sizing images for specific applications! I now understand that resizing the photograph reduces the file size, enabling quicker upload (and download at the other end).  

As I googled for information regarding further benefits of resizing, it then made sense that by reducing the size of the image file, it is possible to send MORE images to someone on-line ... yay! I have often run into the problem of wanting to send information to an assignment partner, only to have the frustration of my 'stupid computer' telling me that my file (only something like an 80 slide Power Point rich in graphics and images :P) is too large and it won't send!!!! I would get so mad after putting all that work into it, and then having to wait until I saw my partner in person to give them a copy and complete the task.So, knowing this will save even more time - perhaps days - as I will know how to re-size images for Power Points to keep the overall size of my files to a minimum, in order to send them electronically. At the other end, my assignment partner will also be able to download the file quicker, reducing the risk of something else distracting her attention while waiting for a huge file to download (assuming it was one of those odd occasions when it was small enough to send in the first place). The result? Quicker, more productive, less frustrating, happier efforts in completing assignments! What more could I ask for?

                                                     

By passing this knowledge on to my future little-bit-older-than-preprep students, they will never have to experience the same frustrations I have! This knowledge will contribute towards their development of positive attitudes and perceptions toward e-learning, as they experience success and feel knowledgeable and empowered in the digital environment. These techniques could be demonstrated on the interactive whiteboard. One such demonstration could involve an image that is so large it will not fit on the whiteboard and needs to be re-sized to be viewed, which would illustrate the importance of grasping this new skill.  

   

To acquire and integrate this skill for themselves, students could take photographs of class activities and projects using digital cameras (and mobile phones), download these to computers, and practice re-sizing their images for use in various ways. They could also scan and re-size artworks and other work samples. To extend and refine their knowledge and understanding they could be encouraged to check the 'properties' of images and scanned items, before and after re-sizing, to see the difference in image and file sizes, and how the properties change to suit various applications. Students could use this new skill to re-size and upload images to PowerPoint presentations and/or to their class blog. To make this new knowledge meaningful, students could discuss how these skills can be used to support their communications with one another online, and to enhance the quality of images used in assignment tasks. Their understanding and application of this skill could be assessed as it is applied, not only within technology lessons, but within other key learning areas. This is a skill that would benefit anyone using digital images, and will certainly stand students in good stead within many future workplaces.  

   

Images in Early Childhood Context

Although the knowledge to re-size images may not be particularly relevant to early childhood students, images play a significant role in their play and education. For example, images embedded within stories promote visual literacy within young children; as the teacher reads the words, the children learn to interpret and make sense of the pictures they see.  But hardback storybooks are just one avenue through which young childen develop visual literacy. Should a teacher wish to create his/her own digital story book, computer activity, classroom blog or website, knowledge of how to re-size photographs would certainly be beneficial and result in a more professional end-product. Another activity, should the teacher be proficient in the use of software that enables image manipulation, is to produce distorted images and have the children identify unusual aspects of the image, for example, what is missing.

For the very young child who has not yet entered school, visual literacy is the primary source of learning and meaning-making. It is not uncommon for young children to recognise the 'golden arches' of McDonald's - which they generally interpret as 'yummy food' and 'I want' (a response that can persist into adulthood; especially in respect to coffee frappes!). They might also be able to visually recognise a first aid kit embellished with a red cross, or recognise a nurse's role-play outfit displaying the same icon.  They learn to 'read' faces for information about people's emotions, to determine how other people feel, and what response would be appropriate (or inappropriate, depending on the child's ambition!). With the aid of verbal literacy, young children encode images of everyday items and events along with with spoken names, such as 'apple' or 'run'. 

Images are a powerful teaching tool in the early childhood learning context. When children enter the pre-prep classroom, they know where to place (and later find!) their personal belongings, guided by a photograph of themselves on allocated lockers. They develop a sense of pride and ownership over their learning space as they know where to place play items at the end of an activity, guided by images of the items on the shelves where they belong. Caring for their classroom in this way also helps to foster positive attitudes and perceptions toward learning. Sequence boards that provide a pictorial guide to the nature and order of the day's activities provide many children with a sense of calm as it enables them to easily predict what is coming next. Perhaps this could be recreated in a digitised form on the classroom computer for those children interested in ICTs? Images are used to develop pre-literacy skills, as objects around the classroom are labelled with pictures and words. These equip children with a valuable repertoire of visually recognised words which they will encounter when they formally learn to read and write.  Visual literacy opens the door to other vital forms of literacy. As children progress through their schooling, it is important that they develop the skills to look carefully and to critically analyse what they are seeing in images - the intent and purpose behind the image. According to Thibault and Walbert (n.d.) 'the proliferation of images in our culture - in newspapers and magazines, in advertising, on television, and on the Web - makes visual literacy, the ability to "read" images, a vital skill'.  

Follow this link to my wiki to hear about
"Mother Hen" 

(a work in progress!)

http://fifiselearning.cquniversityschoolofeducation.wikispaces.net/Week+4

References 

Mongan-Rallis, H. (2010). Why is it important to resize images for use on the web or in PowerPoint. Retrieved November 22, 2012, from 

http://www.d.umn.edu/~hrallis/guides/resize_images/resizing_ppi.html 

Thibault, M. & Walbert, D. (n.d.). Reading images: an introduction to visual literacy.  Retrieved November 21, 2012, from
http://www.learnnc.org/lp/pages/675

 

My Voki

Week 4 - Engagement Activity 4

 

My Voki 

Click the play arrow on the Voki, and then follow the link below to my website:

 

   

http://fionasmanagingelearningwebsite.weebly.com/