Group Two Technologies- PMI of Digital Video

My Movie (Introducing the genius of Sam Nolan) and PMI.
A bit dark and twisted, I know but good for a giggle. I like to acknowledge that my son wrote the text and drew the pictures. All I did was put it together. Sam had a great time doing this and I can see how most children would really enjoy this learning process.
Now to the serious stuff.

I have chosen digital video from the multimedia week because I think it that a combination of images and sounds is more engaging a medium for learning when compared to Flickr and podcasting.



PMI of Digital Video in a Primary School Context.
Pluses:

• Movie making is mulitimodal. It integrates textual, oral, spatial and aural communications into one medium.
• Flexible medium. There is no limit on what you make with digital videos. It could work in all KLA's and meet most of the EL's.
• Easy to use, so young learners could have a go and still create something pretty good. 
• Engaging. Digital video enhances motivation and compels the learner to commit to the process. Students may often sacrifice leisure time in order to work more on their projects.
• Its fun 
• Digital video requires clear planning and organization. As projects are usually collaborative, management, negotiation and problem- solving skills are developed and refined.
• Creates authentic learning experiences.
• Opportunity to build technical skills required to create a digital video.
• Transforms the student-teacher relationship. Students becomes more independent and teachers acts as guides.
• Supports collaboration. Group work creates an environment congruent for peer tutoring, giving opportunities for all students to 'shine'. Success of the project reliant upon effective team work.
• Digital video can be created with basic equipment commonly available. Many households and schools already possess the technology.
• Great activity to cater for constructivist fans. Has the elements of working within a child's frame of experience, social based inquiry, collaborative problem solving, and scaffolded activities to achieve a targeted learning aim.
• Provides an medium for a personal, subjective and interpretive approach to projects.
• A 'real' audience motivates the creator to make something worth while for peers to review.
• Potential to use digital video as a vehicle for student to reflect on own learning.
• The nature of video and the ability to edit or re-shoot allows student to take risks and perhaps explore avenues otherwise dismissed.
• Digital video production demands critical thought. Analysis and evaluation are needed at every stage of production. 
• Delivers information in a medium most of us are familiar with and comfortable to use
• Schwartz and Hartmans: engaging, saying, seeing, doing hypothesis.

Minuses

• Need clear learning outcomes.
• Need to consider the legal and ethical implications of creating a video that has images of children, especially if published to a public domain.
• Need to consider legal implications of intellectual property rights
• May encounter resistence form parents/guardians as to the validity of the project. 
• Must acquire the necessary technical skills. Although these are easy to master, they do take time. 
• Integrity of the video may be eroded after editing.
• Ability to edit may create biased reports/outcomes.
• Greater research is needed to examine how digital video can be used in class and an affective pedagogy developed.
• While digital video maybe an engaging activity, it does not necessarily create curricula outcomes.

Interestings.

• Not being a big movie watcher, I was surprised at how engaged I was doing this activity. 
• My son was instantly enthralled with the idea. He has already made two more story boards for his next projects, without any prompting from me. His limited exposure to the process has already made a impact on his thinking skills, in evaluating whether his story line makes sense and do the images marry up with the text. With practice this would be refined and take less time to do. 
• Its inspirational; girlfriends with children want to make one of their own child's works after seeing mine. Did not expect that. Maybe mothers groups could incorporate this activity in to their meetings. Start this process in play group, now that is an impressive idea. Research shows that a child will learn the most between 0-5 years. 
• I like the informality of the process. It doesn't feel as constraining as my primary school learning experiences had. I think it is this informal learning process that is one of the hooks when working with digital devices.
• The ability to edit with ease is digital video has is benefits and problems

• Creating a digital video compels students to develop and refine their written and language skills. This seems an interesting point because when thinking about digital video, the first assumptions made are that visual and aural literacies would dominate the learning agenda.
• Some believe that digital video may lull viewer to be less critical of content because of the seductive nature of film. Not sure if I personally believe that.

How would I use digital video in a primary school class?
There are two ways to use video in the classroom, pre-recorded video and student generated video.

Pre-recorded video would be useful to use as an instructional aid. Examples would be using age appropriate documentaries or specific recordings that targetted young audiences. The educational benefit would be that children naturally gravitate towards video, and would take greater interest in watching a video than listening to me 'talk and chalk' it. A deconstrucition of the video content using a thinking routine, perhaps the ' I see, I wonder' routine would be most appropriate, as a follow up activity. I could see the relevance of using instructional videos to help teach ideas and concepts realting to social sciences, sciences like biology and chemistry, drama and music.

Using student generated video in my class would probably be a term long activity. I would probably follow the academics advice intially as I become more familiar with school life. So, I would use student generated video for english and science projects, where students would create their own news and current affairs reports. For science, use video to record observations and data which would allow students to make evaluatations and conclusions. I really enjoyed the 'baking cookies' example in the coursework and thought that would be a great learning experience for younger students. 

I have chosen the reading "Students in the directors seat' to do a quick summary. It contains what I think are the relevant points in context to digital video in primary school setting. I will either directly quote from the text or paraphrase.

There are three foci to this study:
1. Focuses on pedagogy rather than technology
2.Focuses on student-generated video rather than professional video productions
3.Focuses on the process of generating the video, rather than focusing on the end product.

One of its main questions is, 'What are teacher's rationales for using student-generated video in their classes?'
Authors argue that,

In general, the literature on computer based learning makes many claims about good practice resulting from computer technology use, but most of these claims are untested (Schuck 2002). It was the aim of this research to conduct an in-depth study to provide understanding of what is happening in a set of classes using student generated video, and to focus on the pedagogical practices rather than the technological ones.

They also add that the research concentrates on the socio-cultural aspects of computer-based learning.

Additionally, the authors also point out that good pedagogical practices include scaffolded activities, designed to help students work independently citing Davidson (2004) as their example -p11.


Furthermore, they state that if using video as a teaching tool or assessment, there must be clear learning outcomes for the students in the initial planning stages ( p12). They use Ludewig  2004 to support this claim.


On page 13:

• the potential of digital video projects facilitate multidisciplinary learning.
• DV promote open ended exploration in authentic based learning environment, particularly when the learner chooses and captures his/her film clips (Squires 99)
• Interesting example: Video based laboratories in science and maths. "Students use of video to presentations to make observations, measurements, and gather data about events. When connected to spreadsheets, students can then use the video clips to efficiently gather data and make graphs and other representations to analyse and model these data. Studies have shown that these video-based laboratories to be both motivating and provide authentic learning experiences for students".

Rationale for using student-generated digital video- p14

1.Development for a variety of literacies

• integration of aural, oral, textual, gestural, spatial, and multi-modal communication along with language required to communicate about images, music and film ( Meeks & Ilyasova 2003).
• positive relationship exists between (video0 projects and the development of critical viewing skills.
• Developing media literacy creates informed consumers and world citizens.
• " The development of visual literacy language is needed for students of engage in digital video projects, but more importantly can become a life skill which is necessary for understanding and communicating in a increasingly visual world."

2. Creating authentic learning experiences.

• DV allows students to engage in real-world problems and situations, rather than abstract and hypothetical examples that can be difficult to put into practice. Example, students create news and current affairs programs.
• DV projects provides unique opportunities, across all stages for constructivists learning approaches to be implemented in a variety of disciplines and result in creation of a product that is appropriate for a real audience.

3. Developing Conceptual understandings.

• DV facilitates conceptual understandings.
• Particularly scientific concepts effectively and quickly.
• DV most appropriate medium for learning and embedding new subject knowledge and understanding and for reflecting on and reinforcing/extending that knowledge. (sounds familiar? dimensions of learning chapt two PCK).

4. Enhancing motivations and other affective outcomes

• Increased engagement is one of the most heralded benefits of student-generated DV tasks.
• students will work through lunch and after school to complete project.
• Students liked the control over the project and independence from the teacher.
• This ownership of project enhanced self esteem and self perceptions in some students.
• DV allows students to take risks. Editing facility provides a safety net.

5. Promoting expression and communication skills. p17

• DV enhances students written and other communication skills.
• Levels the playing field. Allows those students with weak written skills to enhance than while showcasing other communication skills.

6. Develop collaborative learning skills

• DV usually requires group work. 
• benefits of peer learning environments in terms of developing key collaborative and communication skills, appropriate language development, and effective teamwork skills such as negotiation and reaching a consensus.
• This evidence is raised by students and teachers alike as the most important outcome in DV production.

7. Building technical skills

• Obviously, the process would teach students the basic of video production.
• There is a concern from some teachers that the lack of technical skills a student may have may negatively influence  the student and that further research is needed to understand/know what technical skills are needed for students to effectively work with video.

8. Building generic learning skills.

• VD aids in problem-solving, project management, organisation, planning skills as well as thinking, reasoning and risk-taking skills.

The paper further discusses these points in length citing case studies and the importance of the perspective of the teacher. That is, the primary reasons why VD has been used in the classroom is because the teacher recognised its teaching and pedagogical value.

 The authors summarise,

"the findings from this study indicate that well designed student-generated digital video projects are strongly aligned with principles of independent, authentic learning. These tasks are inherently student-centred, context-rich and encourage active group participation. They provide students with flexibility and choice, often creating a strong sense of ownership, self regulation, self-esteem benefits and personal interest in topics." (p79)

Another point, "digital video promotes greater autonomy of the student and transforms the role of the teacher into one of a guide.

The case studies and methodologies provide greater insight and detailed evidence of their arguments. The PMI is covers some of their points. It also includes my personal experiences and ideas from creating my own digital video.


References.
Fasso, W. (2011, April, 5). Group Two Technologies. Digital video in education. Retrieved from CQUniversity e-courses, EDED20491 ICT's for Learning Design, http://moodle.cqu.edu.au/mod/resource/view.php?id=163850

Kearney, M. & Schuck, S. (2006). Students in the director's seat. Teaching and Learning across the School Curriculum with Student-generated Video. University of Technolgy, Sydney. Retrieved from CQUniversity e-courses, EDED20491 ICT's for Learning Design, http://www.ed-dev.uts.edu.au/teachered/research/dvproject/pdfs/ReportWeb.pdf

Schwartz, D. & Hartman, K. (n.d.) Its not television anymore: Designing digital video for learning and assessment. Stanford University. Retrieved from CQUniverstiy e-courses, EDED20491 ICT's for Learning Design, http://aaalab.stanford.edu/papers/Designed_video_for_Learning.pdf