Friday, July 04, 2008

ED-MEDIA 08 Vienna - 1 Example of Talk

Thinking about thinking through multimedia - talk by:

Nicholas Reynolds from the Univ of Melbourne.

This was a study on pre-service teachers.

A task was developed modelled of sound constructivist principles where students had to create a program using microworld and reflect on this process in terms of teaching.


The students were generally passive computer users - not engaging with trying to make the computers do something for them. Were not seen as 'digital natives'.

Their task was to construct a multimedia project- a story, book, a game. ...introduced Microworld was introduced through workshops and lectures to help engage student thinking - over five weeks. Workshops at low skills level. Nicholas was presenting three years of work in this area...Year 1: students became v.engaged so decided to pursue research, varied from year to year. Reflective component - in final year there was a reflective diaries and interviewed users.

One very funny multimedia presentation was The Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly - animated sequence presented of a woman swallowing a fly followed by swallowing a cat, followed by cow and horse.

Some:
- Frustration with MicroWorlds
- struggling with perfectionism
- could not express big ideas

One teacher said she spent a long time to make a relatively short selection of material....she felt that it would help her relate to students in the classrooms.

Another demo to music of Hnadel (I think) - Angry Ants Ate Apples

One student reflecting on task said "This is conguent withboth scaffolding and constructivist theory "

Studnet illustrated and reflected on task drawing from theories of scaffolding with Bruner and Vygotsky--

Makes them explore the programme. Task helped training teachers to understand the importance of constuctivism in task design.

Papert - "You can't think about thinging withouth thinking about something. Coming up about meaningful insights"

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