Assessment Task #3

REFLECTION 3 WEEK 4 – Exploring Group 2 Tools...

Zteven Whitty

This reflection regards the brief interaction, building and exploring experiences I have had over the last week exploring the web 2.0 Group 2 tools. The tool in focus was an animation generator website found at www.GoAnimate.com. Available and appropriate for both teachers and students - this tool has very much altered, for the better, my approach, attitude and projections for designing lessons. Specifically, this on line tool has brought to my attention the value in having as many contingency plans and class content prepared to counter the very possible event of unfavourable teaching circumstances - an important attribute for my desired focus teaching area - Primary school, dance. 

Please find the following components in this post… 

1. TUTORIAL#5   - a video displaying the work produced this week using the online creator.

2. PMI NodeMap  - a graphic charting positive, negative, and, appealing factors of this tool.

3. Ethical Insights   - some safety, legal and ethical notions surfacing from publishing content.

4. Technical Insights  - a brief usability and potentiality account of the technology this tool uses.

5. SAMR Connections -  how this tool integrates established education resource modalities.

Year 6/7 English Tutorial #5 ... 

A little digital diarizing ... 


Please select full scene mode and adjust zoom,

Some specific considerations on legal and ethical matters... 

Using any online content generation tool to create quality educational resources warrants the attention of safe, legal and ethical conduct.  GoAnimate would put a user in the same delicate position as any other online content generator when reckoning with content proprietary inside the act of producing and promoting education resource.

• GoAnimate and safe content proprietary. To ensure safe use of the functions and applications made available by this tool one would need to act respectfully and diligently. Applying appropriate standards and when evaluating suitable assets for pedagogue implementation would still entail a high likelihood of needing to incorporate or include potentially sensitive content, e.g.: assets depicting direct identification of persons, and, in particular, minors; names of students; colleagues etc. This is done so as to avoid possible damages, upset, and, infringement of rights. The following quote was taken directly from  “One way to avoid misunderstandings is to create an explicit policy on Internet behaviour, also known as an “acceptable use policy,” or AUP.”¹ This pertinence of this statement reaches past school gates, and, becomes relevant the moment any person – teacher or student - joins a learning site. Overall, I found one effortlessly comes across plenty of inspiration and options to create engaging education resource with this tool whilst practicing safe content proprietary. 

• GoAnimate and legal content proprietary. Like any online conduct, when intending to appropriate and publicly distribute any non-personal asset, one must ensure that copyright issues are revealed and dealt with professionally, and, that assets are properly attributed to original creators/authors when used in an appropriate manner under certain acceptable circumstances.  An example of acceptable education related circumstances would be proper attribution as part of a Commons Use License, whereby "licensees may copy, distribute, display and perform the work and make derivative works based on it only if they give the author or licensor the credits in the manner specified by these."² Investigating asset usability by checking with or contacting a copyright holder, representative, or any entity exercising copyright law related procedures, and, providing appropriate attribution to images, content, music etc. are mandatory. This issue extends into areas concerning matters where the reposting of student work of which would most likely contain well-intentioned or unknowingly borrowed copyrighted material. I found the information at www.smartcopying.edu.au helpful in following-up copy/communications guidelines. For example, several images (such as the living book and melting butter images found in the video I created and provided website links) of which I purchased and downloaded through my 123RF account in the fantastic image bank website, 123RF.com. Overall, I found one must remain aware to the degree in which wish to invest in the production and promotion of engaging education resource with this tool whilst practicing legal content proprietary. 

• GoAnimate and ethical content proprietary. Something of concern relating to are few particular financial implications of which one may need to keep in mind when choosing this tool. Apart from the      considerations towards optional service fee payment/s, there is a monetizing element to one of the fee-paying plan options of which might hold significant repercussions. An example being, in the event where a valuable education resource or resource set is made publicly available an unapproved vendor might devise a method to monetize the content. I did use the images from a performance work by a private performance artist, and, of course - far from expecting to ever gain anything other than experience with the animation tools - I still wrote the artist with indications as to my use of their imagery and reference, and, requested definitive boundaries as to their inclusion. However, I certainly suspect there could be creators and distributors planning to profit from the potentially completely open slate for dishonest and unjust activity. Some notable features of the business payment plan are the creation of connecting to an affiliate service, and, a monetizing YouTube account. Overall, I found one might consider a lot more than simply the sequencing and manipulation of fantastic images for an engaging education resource with this tool whilst practicing ethical content proprietary. 

Time for a picture... 

...Choreographing animation is cool. 

...So, too, is attribution³ 

Technology applications in my teaching area… 

This tool, with all the accompanying (please see NodeMap) desirable and undesirable characteristics, has completely expanded my faculty as an aspiring primary school teacher.  It has shown me options for potential dance and all class application. For instance, when classroom facilities, venues, or, timetabling issues arise in school sites, it would be extremely helpful to have a whole unit of work on standby ready to be explored. With this, a teacher could hold an engaging emergency lesson on the spot for any given reason inside any given purpose. Additionally, class might be prepared with a resource to examine or review whilst away from a school site where, perhaps, a camp or excursion limits cumbersome materials. More specifically, the element of creating and having a captivating animated instructional/tutorial video on standby has great value in terms of ease of access and interactivity for students. Having lesson content act both on and with a student attests for a very positive offering. The products of this tool offer exactly this characteristic.  The videos work to keep the viewer interested in the content - a major task in any academic setting. Now, looking at the The Arts specifically, an animation–videography hybrid could be an excellent use of media for exploring class activities or assessments. Students in year 7 are expected to demonstrate multimodal content generation at some point along their journey through the Australian English curriculum (please see appendix 1). I simply saw this task as a great opportunity - an opportunity to illustrate the study of performance and visual arts as a versatile, valuable, pithy, skill-building, cross-curricula avenue for pedagogic orientation worthy of pursuit. An image - I suspect - I care to see again.

SAMR concerning my group two tools... 

SUBSTITUTION

Activity definition: a demonstration of topic knowledge in response to an activity.

Activity outline: At this level a student might gather ideas in comics or images and sequentially place them in an animation in response to a performance art work.

Activity example: Use animation to define the difference between the words "Energy" and "Exergy"...


AUGMENTATION

Activity definition: an interpretative or reflective response to an activity of which calls for added comprehension, and, the application of extended concept avenues.

Activity outline: At this level, in response to a performance art work, a student might make inferences on the theme of an art work, generate their own characters and apply individual setting imagery, script agenda, and, subjective action, then place them in an animation with the overlay of personal inflection through chosen dialogue and accent.

Activity example: Use animation to classify EXERGIE Butter Dance as all three main text types an imaginative, an informative text, and, a persuasive text...


MODIFICATION

Activity definition: a demonstration of topic analysis in response to an activity.

Activity outline: At this level a student might create a selected amount of scenes with the intent to contribute towards a group response dramatic animation. Here, a designation of tasks objectively drives the group consensus to arrive at a desired end product.

Activity example: Use animation to dramatize and contribute to your group video what you feel effectively emphasises the textual content of EXERGIE Butter Dance...


REDEFINITION

Activity definition: an investigative or diagnostic response to an activity of which calls for added evaluation and, the synthesis of extended concept avenues.

Activity outline: At this level a student might create an original, recyclable animated video which identifies in response to a performance art work a metaphoric overtone. Here, a designation of corresponding poetic forms/styles awaits a different student to recycle the original video file by layering it with specific poetic characteristics.

Activity example: Use animation to rewrite your assigned EXERGIE Butter Dance metaphor in its corresponding poetic form/style...

Extended SAMR thoughts...

The result of experimenting this week is a tutorial video of which aims to guide a year six or seven student through a body of work at a pace at which the student feels comfortable. Hopefully, if the objective was met, the experience of viewing and working from the animation video would be one of enjoyment, acknowledgement, and, assurance for the participant. This tool has the potential to foster these great attributes by modifying a traditional study guide found in the form of a hand-out.

As previous posts in this blog indicate, for the purposes of these assessment tasks I have made up an acronym, SOCLE: Student Online Collaborative Learning Environment, to express a way of viewing the interactive manner in which the content generation tools can be explored. The video created this week serves as a tutorial for a performance text work unit of a year six or seven English course examining text of types. For those children needing support in this area the overlap in study content allows for consolidation of many linguistically intricate concepts that may go unresolved without proper attention. I feel the modifying ability of GoAnimate to simultaneously incorporate a variety of media allows for an increased chance of a student developing the skills required for effective conceptual awareness. A task of which can be accommodated by the stimulation and connection to higher pattern thinking inside daily events - a line of thought supported by Susan A Miller in her article contribution to “How Abstract Thinking Works” (Miller. S, 2005) For example, the ability to immediately and effectively illustrate an abstract idea once primarily associated with textual or verbal explanation by pulling relevant assets (pictures, imagery, sound etc.) together successfully exhibits as an amazing modification level of technology, and, in my view, definitely has a place in aiding cross-curricular KLA coverage. When accounting the effective message conveying, economic, productive, and, sequencing power of the visually luscious animation tool GoAnimate far out-performs many media when assessed individually. The facility being at the fingertips of any literate person at a computer partnered with the genuine ease of production makes the GoAnimate tool technology an excellent modification on education video resource. It may not be redefining very much in my video example, however, there will sure be redefinition potentiality awaiting the domain of student or teacher creativity to hybridize with any allegory-carrying asset of any KLA such as The Arts.

  

  

Appendix  

1) 

Literacy

Creating texts

Use a range of software, including word processing programs, to confidently create, edit and publish written and multimodal texts (ACELY1728) ⁴

ACARA: ENGLISH, Year 7

References 

¹Taken directly from website, accessed 19 March, 2014: 

http://www.nap.edu/netsafekids/pro_set_internet.html                         

²Taken directly from website, accessed 19 March, 2014: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Commons_license                     

³Attribution example: Attribution, image credit: screenshot image from http://goanimate.com/videomaker/full/editcheck/

⁴Taken directly from website, accessed 19 March, 2014: 

http://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/english/Curriculum/F-10#level7

• Miller S. A. (2005). Early Childhood Today. Jan/Feb2005, Vol. 19 Issue 4, p45-47. 3p.

Thank you for reading my reflection. 

Good Energy !! 

Zteven Whitty 

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