Final Reflection

Final Reflection

Shanna Leviner

Lesley University

ECOMP 6016 Teaching and Learning with Digital Media

October 22, 2011































Teaching Pre-Kindergarten for 10 years has really strengthened my ability to use many different teaching and learning styles. It is a necessity in the early childhood classroom. Four-year-olds are very active learners and have a very short attention span. Therefore, I need to present information in a way that will get and keep their attention. I feel I have developed this skill well over the years, but this class has given me even more insight into teaching and learning with many different media.
According to Najjarr, “multimedia information is most effective when presented to learners with low prior knowledge or aptitude in the domain being learned.”(Najjar, 1996) Being a Pre-K teacher, my class is made up almost entirely of students who have a very low aptitude or experience in general. Therefore, this research is very exciting and promising to me and my students. The movie assignment for this class has given me another way to reach my students, and I am very excited that I learned how to use the movie maker software for an educational purpose. It never crossed my mind that I could make educational movies for my students, or better yet, they could make their own movies. The software was surprisingly simple to use. I was a bit afraid of it to begin with, but I am very glad I learned how to use it.
Other tools that I learned about in this course that I hope to put into use or already use include posters, edited images, voicethread, and again movies. Posters are already a big part of my teaching. When we begin a new subject, we always start by making some type of poster to illustrate how much we know about the subject. We then know where we need to go in order to broaden our understanding of the subject. I use images all the time to help my students better understand certain topics. We recently studied the stars and used images of the constellations. Voicethread is new to me, but seems like it would be a great tool. The children love to hear their own voices, and they take pride in anything they make themselves. Therefore, I can see us using voicethread to record stories to share with the class. Once again, I plan on using movies a lot. This is such a great interdisciplinary tool in which the children can eventually take control over. I can see them choosing a topic like shapes, taking pictures around the school, and then putting together a movie about shapes to present to the class. Not only have they learned about the basic shapes, but also how to use technology to present their learning to others.
As far as my projects for this course, I feel I did a pretty good job. I have never used movie maker, so I was very happy with my final product. I can definitely use this movie in my classroom to introduce the four seasons. However, I think it would be best if the children were allowed to make their own movie about the four seasons. We could make one as a class about general things that happen in each season. Then, each child could make his/her own movie about what they specifically do in each season. This would be a great way to bring in some cultural diversity for the students. Different cultures have different holidays and celebrate the seasons in different ways. So, what a great project; to allow the children to each tell what happens in their family in each season.
My apple lesson is one I have done many times over my course of teaching. However, I have never done a movie at the end of this unit. This is a great way to end many units, not just apples. The children have a great time in the process and really enjoy putting the movie together. They are very proud of what they have made and learned. I think doing projects like this give the children more ownership of their learning. The idea of making a movie gets their attention, and then they want their movie to be the best, so they work really hard to learn the material in order to make a great movie.
The online presentation was something completely new to me. I have never done one before, and I have to admit I was really nervous about it. I was especially nervous when my group could not get the site to work in the beginning. However, it turned out alright. It was actually a really neat assignment. It went a little long, but it was fun seeing everyone’s projects and being able to all come together even though we were in different places.












































Resources

Najjar, L. (1996). Multimedia information and learning. Journal of Educational
Multimedia and Hypermedia, 5 (2), 129-150.