Draft scenario 3

Using digital media to create “broadcasts” of curricular work: presentations, classroom discussions and other school activities are captured and recorded through various means, they are then edited and uploaded to the web or to the VLE.

A little reminder of the guiding questions:

• How would you actually do this in your classroom?
• What would students actually do?
• What other tools and resources would you use or suggest?
• What would students be learning?
• How would you evaluate and assess what they are learning?
• What else would you do and/or who else would you involve?

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Draft narrative overview 22 June 2012

Mrs Clay and Mr Hague are science teachers. They have heard about the iTEC ‘Broadcasting STEM Learning’ initiative and competition. Through this initiative the iTEC project aims to engage pupils from 1000 classrooms across Europe in producing podcasts or short movies/animations about an aspect of the STEM curriculum. These learning broadcasts will be collated on the iTEC platform and tagged (for age group and subject etc), eventually providing a multi-lingual, searchable database of STEM learning broadcasts for students around the world to use for revision and learning purposes. Students and teachers can comment on and rate the uploaded broadcasts according to a set of criteria. The creators of the highest rated broadcasts in each age group will be invited to present their broadcast at an iTEC conference.

Mrs Clay and Mr Hague want to involve their students in making broadcasts about their current topics in Science as they know that in order to make a learning broadcast for others, the students will need to have a deep conceptual understanding of the material themselves. At the start of their new topics of learning, the teachers make the students aware that they will be making broadcasts aimed at their peers (and themselves for exam revision purposes later in the year). They will have a choice of making a podcast or a short film/animation. For this reason, the teachers use both podcasts and videos during their teaching and ask the students to discuss the affordances of each method of communication, thus developing their digital media literacy at the same time as their science understanding.

Once the teachers are sure that the students have a secure understanding of the area of science they have been learning about they support their students plan the content of their broadcasts including what key content to include and considering how to communicate it to their audience. Students create their broadcasts using cameras/digital recorders and free web-based software.

Once the broadcasts have been created students watch/listen to each others and provide feedback to each other using the same criteria/rubrics provided by the ‘iTEC Broadcasting STEM Learning’ initiative. The teacher’s also provide feedback on accuracy of content. The students amend their broadcasts in response to feedback and are then submitted to the ‘iTEC Broadcasting STEM Learning’ initiative as well as being uploaded to the school website/VLE as a means of sharing with the wider school community and parents/carers. Students also spend some time, with their teachers, rating other broadcasts uploaded to the ‘iTEC Broadcasting STEM Learning’ initiative.

Throughout the year the teachers and students refer to the database of learning broadcasts and use the films and podcasts available to support learning discussions in class and revision.