Digital Media

What... Is... The... Point? 

Miller and McVee (2012) use this anecdotal expression in their preface to underpin the relativity and importance of digital media in learning.

To be honest, it was the most relatable anecdote I've read in a long while. This ol' girl has been learning a lot about digital media of late but I can now clearly see how beneficial being digital media literate can be used in learning and teaching.

What is media? Essentially, a channel of communication and its versatility can be utilised in many forms in the classroom. It can be used as a tool for direct instruction, it can be an interactive learning method, and it can be a source for student-created media. When I thought about this for a hot second, I instantly recalled my 'Introduction to Business' unit at CQUni (a brilliant university for distance learning, by the way - check them out here), and how I was the student who created my own media for an assessment. At first, it felt like a mammoth task of creating a 10-minute presentation with 10 slides about a local company that we were to 'pitch' to the business owner. What I realise now is that I learned more about the topic as I used a student-centred lens to investigate and my ICT knowledge and skills to deepen my learning and creatively produce a piece of work. As an active learning strategy, it incorporated the use of still images and spoken voice which Digital Pedagogies Unit Coordinator and transmedia artist, Glenda Hobdell, states is usually the most effective way of learning. 

As a future educator, I anticipate that I will incorporate digital media in one form or another in my pedagogy. During my previous practicum, I used Microsoft PowerPoint as a visual and aural aid in my lesson plans to support my teaching by using bright and interesting themes and embedding relative links to support student learning. I also embedded links to YouTube or free-to-air clips (e.g. ABC iView), that was relative to the topic to engage students in the content. For example, I embedded a YouTube clip in the Year 7 Home Economics lesson about kitchen safety and at the end of the clip, the students recalled what they deemed unsafe in the kitchen. The kicker is that I used something relatable to the students... seriously, who doesn't love The Muppets? If you're after a little trip down memory lane, here's the link to the clip Pöpcørn | Recipes with The Swedish Chef | The Muppets.

Nostalgia aside, this example is what I was capable of at the beginning of my pre-service journey. As I continue to learn and develop my pedagogy, knowing that there is a "superabundance of digitally accessible information" (Miller and McVee, 2012, n.p.) where students can access information instantaneously, it is imperative to incorporate digital learning in my pedagogy to ensure learning is engaging and relative to the students.

Figure 1. Puentedura's SAMR Model.
(Creative Commons)

Creating and presenting media

Considering Puentedura's SAMR model (Figure 1), the learning and teaching methods I have utilised in the past, per the above-mentioned example, enhanced student learning by substituting and augmenting how the content was delivered. 
To develop students' creative learning and understanding, it is important to utilise the modification and redefinition components of the SAMR model. This way, students can access deeper learning relative to their task or design brief; not only to enhance their learning but encourage creative, transformational learning. An example of this could be having those Year 7 students collaboratively create a stop-motion clip regarding the importance of kitchen safety. This incorporates their new kitchen safety knowledge and encourages them to investigate further as they develop ideas to storyboard their stop-motion clip and demonstrate what they have learned.

Audio files

My exploration of audio files in education is currently limited to my own personal learning in this undergraduate degree. While I precariously balance my work/life/study balance, I sometimes find myself listening to my recorded lectures in segments while I drive 20 minutes to and from work each day. Unfortunately, this is not the most beneficial way for me to engage in the lectures as most of my attention is given to the daily commute. What it does do though is highlights areas that I can go back and listen to again when I'm sitting at my desk and can give the recording my full attention and engage in the lecture properly. An important point to mention is my engagement in the audio file greatly depends on the presenter. If there is a lack of character in the presenter's voice, it is very easy to drift away from what is being said. [Again, business lecturers... take a leaf out of this amateur actor/pre-service teacher's book - don't be boring! You might retain more student interest that way!]
But, seriously moving back to how audio files or podcasts could be used in my own pedagogy and supportive of learning... at each level of the SAMR model, audio files and podcasts could be:

• Substitution - using an audio recording of a novel in an English class where the students read along with the recording.

• Augmentation - English students could listen to a podcast recording of a book review that is relevant to a novel they are studying and acts as an exemplar to create their own book review. Or, Home Economics students could format and create recipes based on an audio recording.

• Modification - Home Economics students are tasked with creating an audio file to support visually-impaired students cooking a recipe. They are to use a recipe as their foundation and develop a script using descriptive and sensitive language to use in an inclusive and diverse classroom. 

• Redefinition - In a partner-work task, English students create a narrative intervention based on a character in the novel they are studying. Together the students create a podcast interviewing from the character's lens of their narrative intervention.

Creating and sharing video media

When I began my undergraduate degree, it was a leap straight into Textile Technology where my assessment required me to create a 2-minute video of what I created during Residential School. Trust me when I say it was a massive wake-up call that I had now entered the realm of Higher Education. I just looked at the clip again today as I draft this blog, and it makes me realise how much I have learned about digital media creation since I started my undergraduate degree. There has been such rapid development in digital media over the past few years, that even those with limited digital literacy can manage to create and share videos online. If you're truly interested and don't want two minutes of your life back, the link to my little sewing compilation I fudged my way through with iMovie is here. 
If you refer it back to the SAMR model, this clip merely enhanced my learning by substitution. That is, I documented and shared a digital portfolio of the samples I had created in class. Although, as it was an introductory unit, I believe that this kind of assessment was suitable for my level of learning and understanding.

I propose that future Linda the Educator will be very mindful of this when she is developing lesson plans and assessments for her students and will strive to incorporate deeper, transformational levels of learning for her students.