Radio Show - Successful Learners

A Curriculum For Excellence advocates that children should develop in the four capacities: successful learners, confident individuals, responsible citizens and effective contributors.

Creating a radio show with children addresses these four capacities with a heavy emphasis on 'successful learners' as detailed below:

Enthusiasm and motivation for learning: creating a radio show with children is an exciting medium to engage children in the learning process. By providing a goal, audience and purpose, children will become motivated to participate in a role that suits their learning style and capability.
Determination to reach high standards of achievement: providing an audience for a radio show, whether this be another class, whole school or a global audience, places importance on the standard that the children’s work must reach. Children want others to listen and praise their shows, they want people to come back and tune in again. This will only occur if their radio shows meet a specific standard.
Openess to new thinking and ideas: radio shows are not static they must adapt to news and events as they happen. Children need to be adaptable to their listeners’ needs. There is no point in doing the same show every week as listeners would soon tune out. To keep the show interesting children need to listen to each others ideas and also the views of their audience.
Use literacy, communication and numeracy skills: these three skills are addressed through the radio show in different aspects. Children develop their literacy skills as they create scripts for each show where different styles of writing are taking into consideration; informal for the DJS and formal for the news reporters. A radio show is all about communicating news, views and entertaining the listeners. Children have to learn how to use the tools to communicate and create a show that is not just a talking narrative but an entertaining auditory medium. Although numeracy skills are not as prominent as the other two skills, they are still apparent through the use of the technology where timing and percentages are important aspects as children edit recordings and work out specific timings of various parts of the show to ensure it stays within a specific time limit.
Use technology for learning: creating a radio show requires the use of various technologies from digital voice recorders, microphones, recording and editing software, music making software and Web 2.0 tools. Once the skills in using the various technology has been developed, the technology then becomes learning tools rather than technical ones.
Think creatively and independently: creativity is at the heart of a radio show. Children need to ‘create’ a show incorporating new ideas, music, interviews, questions etc… through taking on different roles. Withing these roles children may be required to work independently to create an aspect of the show where they will record and edit their contribution.
Learn independently and as part of a group: although children have individual roles to undertake, for example, DJ, news reporter, music maker etc… they are all working towards one goal: a collaborative radio show.
Make reasoned evaluations: the whole process of creating a radio show requires continual evaluation from discussion what aspects to include at the planning stage to which aspects to remove at the editing stage.
Link and apply different learning in new situations: there are many aspects of a radio show that enable new learning and skills to develop. Children can change roles with each show to develop new skills or can learn new concepts as the theme of each show changes. Radio shows are not static learning environments but active ones.

MixBook

Mixbook is another online tool that creates a photo book/album. When I first looked at this tool a year ago I dismissed it as I was wanting a tool that incorporated audio too and this did not fit the criteria.

Looking at a tool with tunnel vision limits the true potential and capabilities that can be offered. When viewing any source, one should look at how it can fit into different aspects of the curriculum rather than just one.

Mixbook is an excellent visual representation of images and text in a book format. The example below does not do it justice as a visual representation of a book. To view the extended version then click HERE where the user has to turn the pages. This interactive aspect, rather than slideshow aspect, brings the book alive.

The example I created below will hopefully develop as members of VOTW add their personal page. That's the beauty of Mixbook, it allows collaboration. You can invite others in and they can add to your book. Collaboration can not happen at the same time as the second person will be alerted that a user is already editing the book. This eliminates children working collaboratively at the same time on different machines but it does not eliminate collaboration. Children can still work together on the same book taking different roles. One can be researcher of information that they save to a shared area, one can be retriever or creator of images that is saved to a shared area, another could be writer who writes up the researcher's information in own words whereas another could be designer of the MixBook.

This would result in a collaborative project that meets the needs of individuals within a group as each child takes on a role they can develop a sense of achievement. Although each member has a individual role to take the group still need to collaborate to ensure their final product gells together.

What I like about collaborative projects, using technology, that enable children to work together but at their own machine, is that everyone is participating. When you place two or more children around one machine not all are actively engaged in the learning process. There is only one mouse which is normally controlled by the most able child. Yes, it is true, children can learn for this able child but active participation by all needs to be questioned. Also, children learn by doing not just observing.

MixBook is not limited to collaboration within a class it could be collaboration within a school or with another school. A school could create an account and use MixBook as an electronic newsletter of events, display of work etc that have occurred at the school for each year group. A class can work together to create a book with each child contributing to a page pertaining to class project, environment, collaborative story, instruction etc. Children can use MixBook to create a collaborative project with an exchange school where time and location will no longer be a barrier to the collaboration.

Although the collaborative aspect is an excellent feature, MixBook is also an individual tool where children can create their own books and personalise. These books are another way to represent their learning, knowledge and understanding which can be shared with the world or a selected audience.

Digital tools are what children use at home to represent their meanings. They create, edit, remash and produce but at school traditional tools are the main method with technology being an add-on for some. I am not advocating that the traditional tools should be thrown aside, what I am saying is technology has a place in the classroom if we can look at the tools available and remove the walls of the tunnel so that we can see the opportunities of embedding digital learning in the classroom.

| View | Create Your Own Photoproject

Mobile For What?

What do you use your mobile for?  There are many uses and some people only use a limited array of the tools available.  Vote below to find out more.

Mobile Phones - Past, Present & Future

This short video, which I found at 5min, gives an overview of the transformation of mobile phones over the years.  I managed to spot fifteen of the mobile phones I have purchased over the years.  It is amazing how technology has rapidly changed and what the predictions for the future are.  How many mobiles can you spot that you have purchased over the years?   

The Evolution of Mobile Phones

Your Digital Trace!

Do you know all the places where there is a digital trace of yourself on the Internet? Googling your name can bring up some but is a tiresome task plodding through it. I stumbled over 123people today and tried my name.  Where I thought I knew I had placed information about myself I suddenly found many more places.  What alarmed me most was finding pictures of myself.  For those that know me and my online presence will know that I do not place my own picture on the internet but use an avatar.  To find pictures placed on people's sites without my permission was a bit upsetting.  What do I do now?  Email the people and ask for the pictures to be removed?  Leave it and accept that this is life?  I would like to hear your views but before you fire away why not go over and type your own name and see what comes up.

Test

Digital Video With Children

Digital video is an excellent tool to not only capture learning but enable creativity.  The video below is an excellent example of how digital video can create a learning context through very short clips that are edited together.  This video also reveals the depth of planning that is required before going 'on location'.  

The use of Technologies is part of children’s lives.  Everyday our ‘digital natives’ use technology to communicate, collaborate, problem solve, create, innovate, entertain or simply to do an everyday task out with the school environment. It is our jobs, as educators, to embrace this style of learning and develop ways to engage children in the learning process through using teaching methods that reflect 21st Century learning.

“Being skilled in using ICT is essential is children and young people are to be effective contributors, and to communicate and interact on a global scale.”

 (LTScotland. (2008) Cover Paper For Draft Experiences And Outcomes In Technologies.
http://www.ltscotland.org.uk/curriculumforexcellence/outcomes/technologies/index.asp)
(Date retrieved: 21st August 2008)

Through the use of digital media, children will have the opportunity to develop Language skills through storyboarding, questioning, reasoning and presentation.  The use of technology also affords opportunities for collaboration and creativity as advocated in A Curriculum For Excellence where:

“Young people should find their learning challenging, engaging and motivating. The curriculum should encourage high aspirations and ambitions for all. At all stages, learners of all aptitudes and abilities should experience an appropriate level of challenge, to enable each individual to achieve his or her potential. They should be active in their learning and have opportunities to develop and demonstrate their creativity.” 

(LTScotland. (2004) The Curriculum Review Group 2004: A Curriculum For Excellence. http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2004/11/20178/45862

(Date retrieved: 21st August 2008) 

How does digital video fit into A Curriculum for Excellence?  Read Moving Image and A Curriculum For Excellence by Angus Digital Media Centre for a clear overview.  

Why Are We Teaching?

Why are you going into the classroom on Monday?  Is it for the money or is it because you believe in many reason to be there?  Watch below and see if you believe.

What A Load Of Wiki!

Wikis are an effective tool to enable collaborative work within the school setting or with others around the world and allow children to share their work outside the four classroom walls.

Wikis can be used in two ways - show and display or collaboration. Show and display is the most common method as it allows children to display their work on the Internet so their friends and family can view or to share with their partner schools around the world.

An example of a school using wikispaces as 'show and display' can be seen at The High School of Dundee's Junior School wikispace. Here you will see how each year group has their own area to display their ICT work.

An example of a school using wikispaces as a collaborative tool, within the school setting, can be seen at The High School of Dundee's Junior School RadioHigh. The children use this wikispace to create collaborative radio shows.

Finally, an example of using wikispaces to collaborate and 'show and display' can be seen at Voices Of The World where schools around the world work together to connect our children.

Let's Get Talking

The use of the voice as a means of presentation online by children is possible in this world where the written and typed word are the main means of communication. One way this is possible is through the online tool voki where children, and adults, can create an animated character that talks.

Here are some examples of vokis being used in education:

1. Teacher's using the tool for personal use - see my voki to top right of this blog;

2. Children using voki to introduce each other by telling 8 random facts about themselves at the High School of Dundee;

3. Children using voki to connect with others around the world at Voices Of The World;

4. Using voki as a school mascot to develop listening skills and engage children in the learning process.;

5. Modern Languages - learn words, listen in French and translate into English etc'

6. To introduce what the children are going to learn today as below (WALT & WILF):



Get a Voki now!

Legitimate Peripheral Participation - Situated Learning

This grand title, Legitimate Peripheral Participation, sounds better placed in a law book than in education, however, the addition of, Situated Learning, to the title gives the game away. This book reflects the work of Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger in the late 80's early 90's. Reading a book published in 1991 is a contrast from my normal repertoire where I am normally looking forward and finding what will be happening next in Education. However, to look forward, a backward step is always required to understand what came before and how to build on it.

Lave and Wenger theory of learning, back in the early 90's was that a move from viewing learning as acquisition of certain forms of knowledge to seeing it as a social relationship where situations and participation and the keys to learning through Communities Of Practice. Lave and Wenger believed that the best way to learn is through working with others where learning is distributed amongst peers rather than individualised and stored in the heads of individuals. Learning is not seen as a discrete body of abstract knowledge but about engaging in the learning process with others. This has similarities to Vygotsky's sociocultural approach that incorporates Marxist theories where culture provides the children with the means to, what to think and how to think. According to Vygotsky, children learn through shared problem solving with others, parent, teacher, sibling or peers where the child is guided initially with knowledgeable parent etc until some responsibility can be taken by the child.

Learning in this way is referred to, by Vygotsky, as working in the Zone of Proximal Development where cognitive development occurs through interaction with others. Lave and Wenger's Legitimate Peripheral Participation mirrors Vygotsky's theory in that through working with others in actional contexts, children can construct knowledge.

Etienne Wenger explains the three dimensions to a Community Of Practice:

What is it about? - joint participation

How it functions? - mutual engagement

What capability it has produced? - shared repertoire of resources, routines, vocab etc.

Reflecting on these three dimensions and my own collaborative projects, there are many similarities to the Voices Of The World (VOTW) project where:

What is it about? - children around the world participating together each month in a global project to unite our children using their voices rather than text.

How it functions? - through agreement by teachers a monthly task is undertaken using the same skills and rules as all involved.

What capability it has produced? - through sharing the same resource, wikispace, routine and media.

Using the term 'collaborative' for the above project could be said to focus more on technical knowledge, skills and creating a product to share with others in a show and display area where children can learn from one another. Communities of Practice, however, are more than skills and knowledge, they are also:

- relationships

- identity

- commitments

- memories

Building communities with technology, for our children to learn and for like minded educators to learn from one another, enable learning to expand the term situated from the immediate community to the global one.

A Task For My Viking Educators!

Below is the instructions for my viking educators to create their own vokis. Have fun.

| View | Upload your own

The New Technologies Guidelines

The new Technologies Guidelines issued by Learning Teaching Scotland are a breath of fresh air to the out-dated 5-14 Guidelines. The 5-14 Guidelines were a good source of knowing what skills children were to develop when they were first published in 2000. Due to the advancements in technology, the skills the chidlren have all ready acquired through using technology outwith school and the drive of the Curriculum For Excellence where creativity and active learning should now be at at the heart of teaching and learning, the new guidelines provide a framework for implementing a more creative approach with Technology.

The slideshow below provides and overview of the new guidelines with a closer look at the Early Years level which is applicable to Nursery and Primary 1 in Scottish schools.

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Progressive Inquiry In Computer Supporte Collaborative Learning (CSILE)

Facilitation of progressive inquiry at school appears to require changing in the traditional division of cognitive labor between the teacher and the students and encouraging students themselves take on responsibility for cognitive (e.g., questioning, explaining) and metacognitive (e.g., goalsetting, monitoring, and evaluating) aspects of inquiry (Bereiter and Scardamalia, 1987). Teachers should not, however, rely too much on students’ unguided creativity, but should intervene by providing pedagogical guidance and an expert-model if students are not able to make progress themselves. Therefore, in order to productively participate in CSCL, in each pedagogical situation balance should be found between teacher-controlled and student-controlled aspects of inquiry (Hakkarainen, Lipponen, & Järvelä, in press).

In traditional classroom learning situations the goals of the learning are clear, concrete and mainly set up by the teacher. In a progressive-inquiry classroom, students have to self-generate their learning agenda and are also responsible for setting up goals.

This may look like giving children too much freedom to learn what they think they need to learn. Delve a little deeper and it is clear that this is not the case. Rather than teach children in the traditional way and churn through page after page of a course book because it fits the exam, why not find out what the children know and need to learn. It may be that the children are ready to take the exam tomorrow.

Giving children the opportunity to reflect on what they know and plan what they need to find out is actually harder work than picking up the textbook and teaching from that. The teacher needs to still have broad aims and objectives working within a framework which is then developed with the needs of the children.

Reflection of how we learn and how we teach is not a bad thing. I know that my reflections are highlighting that the web 2.0 is being used too much as a show and retrieve model rather than true collaboration between others. Rather than communicating and producing individual products it is now time for mass collaboration to create one end product!

Collaborative Technology For Facilitating Progressive Inquiry

'A fundamental aspect of the design of computer supported collaborative learning (CSCL) environments is to provide users tools for posting knowledge productions into a shared working space and providing tools for progressive discourse interaction between the users.' (Scardamalia & Bereiter, 1993)

Today's free Web 2.0 tools enable 'computer supported collaborative learning environments' if used in the correct context. Take blogs for example, many are used by educators as an electronic diary to show what what is happening at school. My school blog is exactly this, a place to inform children and parents what is happening at our school. Our school radio blog, RadioHigh, also displays our shows as they are published. In other words, the tools are being used as a means to share with others what we do but with no collaboration.

Not all our blogs are purely show and tell areas but area areas to enable communication with others outwith our school. Our bear blogs allow our children to learn about each other's cultures through bear diaries. Again, they are still a place to publish and show with some aspects of communication through the comment options of each post. In reality, the comments are not really providing the children with 'true' communication due to the inconsistent approach that is implemented by some teachers where the comments are placed randomly with no feedback. More a case of by placing a comment on the blog this is satisfying a tick box. Although the blogging aspect has not produced in depth collaboration, this is not the fault of the children as they are using the tools as they have been taught. The change come in the teacher approach where modelling good practice will sew the seeds of effective collaboration.

The other collaborative tool that I implement at school is wikispaces which provide an excellent tool for collaboration and for show and tell too. True collaboration on the workpieces is taking place through our RadioHigh wikispace where the children work together, outwith school, to create their radio show using the main page as the collaborative script and the discussion area to communicate with one another. I am now currently working on a collaborative activity using wikispace with three countries in Europe that will provide a space to develop their knowledge rather than just share their knowledge mirroring the following approach that emphasis:

'the importance of engaging students in processes of question- and explanation-driven inquiry by imitating practices of scientific research communities. Progressive inquiry entails that new knowledge is not simply assimilated but constructed through solving problems of explanation and understanding (Bereiter & Scardamalia, 1993).'