Informal Blog Task: Week 8
During today’s seminar, we were introduced to a range of
applications (apps) that can be used within the classroom to support literacy
learning. I mainly focused on two apps and were able to make a comparison
between the two based on their potential for use within the classroom based on
prior experience and from experimenting with them.
One app that was shown to us on an Ipad, was ‘Book Creator’.
Book creator enables the user to create their own multimodal books using
photos, audio clips and text. This draws a comparison to the use of Powerpoint
last week, however the app sets up the book automatically. In terms of
potential for literacy learning, ‘Book Creator’ would allow for the child to
create texts with the support of images in an active and creative way which would
encourage participation and the opportunity for group work, as experienced
within the seminar today. One implication that presented itself was that,
within the seminar it took a short while for me to work out how to use the app.
In terms of teaching, it appears that children would require a detailed input
and the allowance of time to experiment with the app. Within my own practise I
would allow children time to not only ‘get to grips’ with the programme but to
create their own text. This may require planning as within my own practise,
when asking children to create a story, a detailed plan was needed in order for
children to process their ideas, it is questionable whether this is the same
for multimodal texts.
The second app that was shown within the seminar was ‘Collins
Big Cat’. There were a selection of these apps which all told a different
story. Not only does it give children the chance to read independently and be
read to, but to also create their own story based on the one they have read.
This suggests that the app can be used with younger children and children of
different abilities as the app facilitates to independent readers as well as
less able children that require support. Despite this, it appears to be limited
in terms of creation of the child’s own multimodal text. In comparison to ‘Book
Creator’ the app shows little room for progression in both literacy skills and
ICT skills as children do not have to find their own sources or have the opportunity
to be largely creative. The app does however provide a starting point for
perhaps early readers and does clearly allow the child to engage with the
features of storytelling such as scene setting and characterisation which are
made explicit by icons, this is important as children can require a framework
or basic structure for stories (Medwell et al, 2009). In my own future practise
I think this app would be a useful starting point to the introduction of
multimodal texts before moving the children onto having more freedom in
creating their texts. This is also useful for early readers and so I would use
this to help children to engage with the story and provide ideas for their own
text.
Medwell, J., Wray, D., Moore, G., &
Griffiths, V. (2009). Primary English: knowledge and understanding. Exeter:
Learning Matters.
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