Exploration & Reflections -
This is a large a diverse group, so I will be spending some time reflecting on each technology in this group, however I chose Google Maps to perform a SWOT at the end of this group's analyses (see end of this post).
Animations & Simulations (inc' Interactive Learning Objects)
Most people whose childhood was in the 20th century, like myself, have grown up with animations and are familiar with the ability of animation to convey meaning, concepts and abstract ideas very differently to normal 'real' video. Examples are common today where we see animations working to communication ideas in the real world; in advertising animations such as the Dodo bird, Ranbuild Man, or the classic - Louis the Fly, in Sport such as the Cricket Duck, in safety or civic campaigns such as the Slip Slop Slap bird, the Recycling Super Heroes or even the Microsoft Office Assistant which can be set as a paper clip or many other animations.
Effectively the suspension of disbelief that is applied by the viewer/reader of animations provides them access to whatever other message/s the animation is conveying. Even animations of scenery conveys ideas differently to real footage. But that is the beauty of such an art and its pedagogical potentials; ideas which may be confounded by other texts or sub-texts in a reading (say of a textbook or a video) may be conveyed by animation in a focused way. The capacity for animation to be crafted and manipulated far exceeds that of the real-world or real-people. (Note: As digital technology has evolved, today the line between computer generated animation and computer generated special effects video has drawn very close together).
Super heroes may have been first produced in picture & comics books , but today they can be re-created easily with computerized animation software. The practical teaching applicationsof animation as a tool may range from teachers using animations for learning designed viewing in complimenting a topic in a relevant way, to students creating their own group or individual animation projects. But even the simplest of movement can be eye catching and draws students attention to a point or aspect.
Above: Geography teacher (Source: Animation Library for Teachers)
Exploration of animation design is an engaging learning activity that could be readily scaffolded within a Geography or SOSE class, e.g. in the following animated video created by students in a school project, students collaboratively explored vulcanism and constructed an animated video (using from their own knowledge and skill set and drawing from other sources of information) which demonstrated their procedural knowledge acquired on the topic. The beauty of computerized animation is now that there are animation creation platform software commercially available, but the difficulty is that the procedural knowledge for digital animation can be complicated.
Although the quality of this student animation is somewhat robotic & unrealistic, beyond the artistic and aesthetic dimension the teacher may recognize some great investigation into vulcanism in context as a critical earth science. The students devised fictional characters to demonstrate this, e.g. news anchor, reporter, vulcanologist etc which show not only student teamwork and collaboration skills in scripting, animation production, acting and directing, but also a relatively deep analysis of some procedural knowledge of vulcanism. Along the way the students made choices which demonstrates students grasp of abstract concepts of comic satire and even irony, such as having the volcano erupt and have the characters use buckets as 'safety gear'. (Personally I do not think some humor mocks the task or is disrespectful) Further, the students demonstrate also they have learnt some aural literacies and attempted to make some scientific observation (example of critical thinking) in the part where the solid volcanic ejecta (the size of a car) squashes one of the characters, and the other characters discuss (analyze) the sounds heard. Interestingly they mistakenly use the term 'atrophy' when describing the sound of a disintegrating muscle and bone (when atrophy means wasting). This gives the teacher some insight into whether the students truly understood the dictionary defined meaning of their chosen words and can launch the teacher into other literacy outcomes working with procedural vocabulary.
I experimented with a couple of free animation programs - one called Anima8or and a fun one called Free Morphing 2.1. The morphing tool was fun and fairly easy to use, but I found getting into the animation program very difficult and it would require a great deal more exploration on my part before I start creating animations that way. Such programs abound and there seems to be a great deal of resources available, so I believe that animation could be worth investigating further, given more time, for my future teaching toolkit, although I foresee more so with SOSE/Geography than Music (at this early stage).
The gaming industry is now larger than the film industry around the world & relies upon animation in games and game-movies which support the games concepts & storylines. Now gaming is a good segue way into discussing simulations, but let me establish this: not all animations/simulations are considered good tools though.
So,... on that matter, I bring some great news....
....Guitar Hero is DEAD!
HOORAY!
I am happy to report that, according to Richard Young (Rolling Stone, May 2011):
'The party is over. The game series that has been responsible for obliterating more hands than any other
in the world is kaput.'
Apparently the game brand that took the world by storm is no longer going to be developed. Guitar Hero has robbed both young guitarists and drummers of the motivation to practice their chops and denied the world of half a generation of new musicians wasting time on colour-coded target practice! Guitar Hero is not musicianship 101, not even .00000000001. It has a soundtrack and that is as close to music as it gets. Happily, Activision (software production company) will discontinue Guitar Hero as a business unit and cease game development for that brand.
Let me tell you this: Guitar Hero is NOT a true simulation. Unlike other music simulators (e.g. the drums kits or piano keyboards on smart phones or mac-books) which are fairly realistic to a degree (no actual sticks or keys but the pictures and sounds relate to the reality of the instruments). Other useful simulations (basically practice programs) I have experienced are truer simulations (e.g. Flight Simulators, etc).
Simulations are available (many include animations) which may be useful in teaching geography or SOSE classes such as those I found on Ideas to Inspire. I particularly like the idea of the Goggles Flight Simulator (by Google) but the maps would not load. However, that is one thing I particularly enjoy doing when using Google Earth is the 'Fly to' function (more on that later). As I am interested in human geography, the Darfur is Dying simulation was very relevant and poignant. I can imagine it won't be long until a Libyan version is made, but I believe these kind of SIM-ish games are a good strategy to engage students in alien contexts. War in our homeland is very rare in Australia, and has a place in history with the instances like the Cowra POW Breakout and Japanese assault on Darwin. But students may yet go beyond the disbelief of the cartoon animation into the action of the simulation exercise (e.g. foraging water, staying alive & not captured by Janjaweed militia in the process) and experience glimpses of their own very real fear given a similar situation for themselves. Simulation achieves acquisition of skills and knowledge without the danger of the reality it is model upon. In the future, creation of my own simulations might be possible given the animation and web design software that is available, should I be able to gain the procedural knowledge to produce them.
Google Documents for Collaboration
The idea of online word processing, spreadsheet & presentation editors is a bit daunting for privacy & control issues, although I do believe the Google account security to be fairly secure. The ability to store work online does mean less paper and so long as a student has access to Google and their account, they can work on any of their uploaded/created documents. I like the idea that students can collaborate (thru the shared collections) on works or peer-review.
The range of possible approaches to developing essay writing and language skills in teaching with Google docs for SOSE/Geography is significant. I can imagine progressive peer-reviews of individual essays investigating such tricky topics Indigenous peoples and the geography of genocide (ELs relevant: culture, identity, place, space, time, continuity, change). Or imagine a project on sustainability in the Mining industry (similar ELs). Students could write preliminary investigations and research findings up, and construct a essay plan, and upload these to Google Docs for others to read. A round of peer reviews (another assessment adjunct to the essay) could occur which would be engaging for students and cross-fertilize there knowledge collectively. As teacher I could be on hand to provide input and guide quality outcomes, but the hard work of the investigation, research and review/essay writing is actually mostly performed by the students.
{Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.}
(Chinese Proverb).
The benefits of referential literacies is well understood by tertiary students, but it would be great if some referencing and citation skill is taught at an earlier school stage. Because the teacher (ideally) can readily access the Googles Docs too, teacher can also focus attention on scaffolding/prompting/facilitating structurally robust essay writing and referencing and development of the student's command thereof, which amounts to enhancement of language literacies too. I can foresee this happening in any of my teaching areas.
Geography content is broad as space itself, but according to the QSA 'Geography is offered in the school curriculum because it is a valuable medium for the education of young people.' (2007). Google Docs will be a useful tool in developing many skills which support student becoming geographically informed citizens. Literacy which transcends disciplines will be acquired. Student's presentations could provide them the chance to develop oral language skills too, or set backdrops to live social/environmental debates which also increase persuasive speaking skills.
The capacity for Google Docs to be scaffolded and integrated into almost any subject delivery is also significant. I can see a use for this program in music in documentations relating to music history or ethnology, but perhaps a good use might be as a repository for practice exercises that the student find or even develop themselves. A spreadsheet could be used to log practice or other notable times like research or even time spent on composition. Students could upload compositions for peer-review or dissemination of music notation parts of songs to practice for an ensemble or band.
Online Concept Mapping, Online Timelines & Zooburst for Interactive Storybooks
The Online concept mapping tool of Bubbl.us is a great device useful for creating neat & colorful flow charts to convey concept connections and is very user friendly. The tool is very easy to use and would be very useful to produce interesting graphic organizers. I found the Bubbl.us concept maps very useful as scaffolds for my learning during this course too. In music, recording can sometimes be a tricky process and the concepts difficult to convey. But the steps in using music recording technology could be developed by a teacher/student who wishes to extend their own learning and pass on the recording procedural knowledge they acquired during a recording task/s.
Dipty has clear applications for history classes, but also for geography classes. Timelines are great for both sequential learners and the visual learners are also catered for with the possibility of embedded pictures. I can see a clear application of Dipity timelines in geography classes investigating the physical geography of a particular area & its geomorphology or illustrate declarative and procedural knowledge of the changes in the human conditions of urban Australia.
Zooburst creates a digital interactive pop-up book, which is a novel idea. The application of this as a tool for music or SOSE/geography teaching is perhaps a bit limited. The visual learner is catered for with a 3D presentation of 2D books. There may be some chance to create a Zooburst book for a junior SOSE class, or perhaps the students could create their own. But to do so would mean paying membership fees (should they wish to upload images) or the school/teacher would have to find the funds. The teacher might wish to create their own Zooburst in order to convey certain aspects of a topic, but that obviously may take some time to produce whilst learning to use the program.
Google Earth & Goole Maps.
The following pics are screen shots of my investigation in using Google Earth & Google Maps. The applications for music teaching is very limited, unless you are planning a school band camp trip to visit New Orleans or Salzburg. (btw I actually used the 'Fly to' function to go to New Orleans and it is not a visual enthralling city!)
But to teach geography using Google Earth is a match made in heaven so to speak. You can literally view the (virtual) Earth through the visage of satellite and street level photography. The use of a search engine linked to Google itself and any ads, images, videos, guided tours, and other postings relevant to a specific area provides teachers and students the chance to see geographies from around the world. Interestingly Google Earth suits the global learners need to see the part in relationship to the whole. The choice of map layers and other functions (such as roads, sights-seeing spots, cities/towns, labels of landmarks, water-bodies etc, etc) creates opportunities for teachers/students to design diverse and engaging presentations with such maps, creating maps, and designing lessons so maps are used to illustrate area geographies in ways text cannot. This is a valuable tool for the modern geography teacher.
Here is my home & work marked with 'pins'. I can imagine this type of activity being incorporated into a essay topic about the area in which they live (ELs: place and space). Maps can be viewed from any above angle (e.g. 2nd pic) . Students could map a pathway from home to school/work or make additions/notes to the map such as I did (scroll down, see the peanut shape of Middlemount, my town).
SWOT on Google Maps
Strengths
- Google Maps is a free software.
- Navigation tool is easy to use
- Images from around world from almost any angle
- Links with Google earth
- Easy to scaffold tasks which convey students to essential learnings
- Provides perspective of global physical geographies and human geographies
- Intelligent use of map layers provides illuminating learning designs
- Can embed maps or take screen shots for later manipulations
- Conveys a lot of information about human and physical geographies
- Edits can be made to maps should landmarks or specific buildings are incorrectly located
Weaknesses
- Embedding maps doesn't always work
- Requires computer and internet access for online use
- Resolution of images is poor at close range
- Markers and labels sometimes clutter visage
- Sometimes the maps are imprecise (although no maps are perfect)
- Cartography is a manual craft and the software robs students of motivation to learn it when software can achieve a more detailed result in shorter period
- Cannot take a computer into the outdoors to use Google Maps if internet access is unavailable
- Brings the world to the student rather than the student out into the world
Opportunities
- Maps are staple for a great deal of geography studies & Google Maps are excellent quality
- Google maps enables students to experience other places in the world using supportive imagery, videos and other links from the map
- Pedagogy and assignments on population/tourism can be designed directly utilizing Google Maps as a tool to establish locations and provide a framework for mapping tourists/migration.
- Screen shots of Google Maps are easily manipulated with drawing programs such as Paint
- Links with Google earth could be very well explored and virtual/simulated tours could be set up
- Students can all visit the same virtual place or individual choices
- Google Maps can be integrated into Google Docs or other platformed presentation editors such as Powerpoint, Prezi or Glogster (embeds or screen shots)
Threats
- The loss of manual cartography skills amongst subsequent learner cohorts over time
- Diversity, such as low economic status or impairments may deny equitable access to computer resources
- Data from website might not be available when required for download
- Because it is so easy to use, students may come to rely upon this as if it was the only geographic information system (or way of gaining a perspective) in the world, when there are others such as ArcGIS which can allow the development of more complex maps and geographic presentations
- Orienteering in the outdoors may become a less viable option for teaching geography outdoors (e.g. on field trips) such as applying practical bush (survival) craft if students only known context for a compass is the Google Maps navigation device
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