Week 11: The construction of a talking book with primary pupils

Week 11

The construction of a talking book with primary pupils

Learning Objective:

To create a talking book about Article 13 using the Veescope app on the ipad

Success criteria:

· I can use Veescope on the ipad

· I can air drop photos

· I can record my ideas about what Article 13 means to me on the ipad

To begin with our group was very apprehensive about teaching children how to use ipad applications, due to the fact that we had limited time to explore the features ourselves on the previous visit. However we had time to practice what we wanted to achieve before meeting the children. Article 13 would be the main topic in focus for the video, taken from the UN Convention on the Right of the Child; Freedom of expression (UNICEF, 2012: Article 13). After discussing the learning objectives and success criteria with the children, they were asked to feedback their ideas on how we can display article 13 to others in their class. The children were essentially taking on the role of producers/ authors; they were responsible for presenting Article 13 to an audience. In support of this Brindley (2000) suggests that literacy ‘is the boarder canvas. ICT is the medium of access and construction’ (pp14). More importantly, in our new multimedia world children ‘are not restricted to mere coding and decoding of texts rather they are being used to describe the process of extracting meaning from, and recording, and presenting your own meaning through, the full range of media.’ (McFarlane, 2000: 19). Overall it was very exciting for me to witness this first hand.

Beldarrain (2006) states that constructivists approach to teaching and learning are most effective when students have autonomy over the process (Beldarrain, 2006; Fountain, 2005). Discussion is essential in allowing children to make appropriate choices about the modes and formats in which they can best represent their ideas. ‘Explicit discussions about layout features, colour, font, size and style, choice of language...is likely to have an impact on their use of different modes and media for specific purposes.’ (UKLA, 2004:18). Therefore we encouraged the pupils to share their ideas, and adapt our plan as much as possible to cater for them.

Additionally, In order to learn specific skills across the curriculum, there is a need to teach specific skills in advance. However Beauchamp (2012) argues that we should not underestimate children’s skills. In support of this, a child aged 7 was asked the question‘what modes of communication are there?’ and replied the child replied ‘There’s talking, photos, computer graphics, drawing, print, sign language, music, films.’ (UKLA, 2004:5). The children today were of a similar age, we asked them about what applications they have used on the ipad and how confident they were with using them. Each child expressed confidence with using the application Veescope. Therefore we allowed them to demonstrate what they understood using the ipad, this also allowed us to see how much they knew before teaching the session. Hague & Payton (2010) highlighted how many teachers often report that a majority of young people are not as knowledgeable and as technologically savvy as they can appear. Consequently their confidence may be misleading; this seemed to be the case for the pupils today. They all knew how to open the application however their knowledge did not extend much further.

From the experience today, I strongly believe that as teachers we should not underestimate how quickly pupils acquire new skills. Once pupils where taught the skills needed for today they implemented them instantly. For example once shown how to extract a picture into the background to appear on the green screen they had done so repeatedly with ease. Overall our group, consisting of three adults and five children, successfully managed to achieve the learning objective by constructing a talking book using the green screen, voice recordings, pictures and text. We hope you enjoy it as much as we have. I also feel that as a class of trainee teachers, we had walked away from todays session with greater confidence and enthusiasm to use ICT throughout the curriculum. 

Beauchamp, G. (2012).ICT in the Primary School, From Pedagogy to Practice. Essex: Pearson Education Limited.

Beldarrain, Y. (2006). Distance education trends: integrating new technologies to foster student interaction and collaboration. Distance Education, 27(2), 139-153.

Brindley, S.(2000).‘ICT and Literacy,’ in Gamble, N.& Easingwood, N (2000) ICT and Literacy, London: Continuum. pp 11-18

Hague, C., & Payton, S. (2010).Digital Literacy across the curriculum. A Futurelab handbook [Online] www.futurelab.org.uk (Accessed 25.03.14)

McFarlane, A. (2000).‘Communicating meaning- reading and writing in a multimedia world’, in Gamble, N.& Easingwood, N (2000) ICT and Literacy, London: Continuum. pp 19-24

UKLA (2004). National Curriculum, More than words multi modal text in the classroom. Key Stage 1-2. Great Britain: QCA [Online] http://www.suehorner.com/resources/7_More+than+words+$282004$29.pdf(Accessed 25.03.14)

UNICEF. (2012).‘A summary of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child’ Unicef United Kingdom. [pdf] Available from: https://www.unicef.org.uk/Documents/Publication-pdfs/betterlifeleaflet2012_press.pdf(Accessed: 25/03/2014).