When I started this course, I already had a fairly broad concept of literacy and definitely took a critical literacy approach, but class discussions and the literacy exploration have helped me develop that further. My new concept of literacy is that it's an understanding of a system of symbols, whether those be marks on a page, use of color, human gestures, changes in the environment, or cultural comprehension. My iMovie project added to that understanding as I struggled to interpret what symbols I was including in my movie and how it would help the viewer experience the project. Effective literacy instruction, then, requires me to not only understand these symbolic systems, but to teach my students to decipher symbols in their lives.
Because students have different learning styles - some learn kinesthetically, some visually, some by listening, and many by a combination of methods - teaching needs to take diverse forms. The movie I made with iMovie would help visual learners most, but by adding a voice over I could have geared it toward students who need to hear, and by having students film the video, kinesthetic learners could meet their learning needs. Using a video also allows ELLs to view the content multiple times, something that isn't as available to them if I choose to teach the material to them in a traditional classroom format.
Part of what I needed for the project was digital literacy, mostly in awareness of how to use a "Help" button. Most of the directions I needed were available with the iMovie program as long as I could figure out how to accurately describe what I wanted to do. Using the "Help" function is a really valuable skill (one I'd like to teach my students), and I think it's one thing that separates digital immigrants from digital natives: natives expect there to be a help guide available to them and try to use it before they seek human help.
The pictures that I choose were meant to cue the viewer to think about what would appear on the slide so that they could process it more effectively, and I tried to use the zooming for the same effect. In order to use this technology, my students would have to develop a more refined sense about what a picture tells the person looking at it and how they can add information to it. I chose not to do a voice over for my project because I didn't know how to create one that would add information that my titles didn't, but for younger students, a voice over could be a flexible way to add information and practice fluency. Also, I found that better planning from the start would have created a significantly better product - I didn't know how to time my slides or how long transitions would take. I wish I had storyboarded my project with the text I was planning to use, something I would definitely have my students do, before I started cutting clips, applying titles, and adding transitions. These skills would require and develop a sense of story elements for my students. Overall, this project has made me excited to create new iMovie projects in the future, particularly in a collaborative setting.
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It seems clear to me that you have thought long and hard about this particular type of literacy and how learning how teaching yourself to work with a new type of technology could be useful to you in a future classroom. If you were to use the iMovie program in a classroom, what ages do you think would respond most effectively? You mentioned having the students work with the program themselves, but again, what age do you feel would be most appropriate? Would you have them all make a movie on the same topic, or have them become 'experts' on a topic to teach the rest of the class? I was also intrigued by the idea of teaching students how to use the 'help' feature of an unfamiliar program. I had never really though much about that, but it is true that some of the help features can be tricky and non-intuitive, but are also extremely helpful to know how to use. How would you teach students to work with that feature? What programs would you focus on learning the help features of, or would it be a general across the board instruction? Your application of this technology for ELL students is also important, but how would you give them the opportunity to view the presentation multiple times? Would you let them watch it on individual machines, or make CDs for them to take home? What about students that do not have capabilities to view or work with this program outside of school, but who depend on seeing the presentation multiple times?
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