‘Using Digital Literacies in Year ’ Roxburgh Homestead Primary School

ABOUT US …  My name is Cathie Sutton, and I am part of the Year 6 team at Roxburgh Homestead Primary School in Melbourne, Australia,  Our school is well resourced with a specialty built 60 PC computer lab; classrooms have 4 new notebooks in each with the capacity to borrow additional laptops in order to engage in rich ICT tasks within classrooms,

SEMESTER 1 …  It was discussed during Year 6 Team planning early in the year that students would benefit from learning how to engage with reading/viewing/writing/creating/analysing, by utilising the school’s available technologies,  I am currently completing a ‘Masters in Literacy’ and my major focus has been largely on effectively using digital media in Literacy, so this was a perfect time to plan for digital story telling within our team.

BEFORE BEGINNING …  We wanted to ascertain what our students thought ‘digital literacies’ or ‘digital media’ was before beginning the Alice episodes, so started some questioning and brainstorming around this theme first,  We talked about the idea of ‘Sensory Input’ … what might this mean?

SEMESTER 1 …  Students first watched and analysed Alice’s story in China, and reference was continually made to ‘Sensory Input’ in order that the students focused their attentions on what the story was doing to their senses,  Students compared digital stories to traditional bound books, and noted differences and similarities,

A SUCCESSFUL DIGITAL STORY?  Students then analysed key aspects of a successful digital story and the main driving theme amongst all students was the fact that digital stories elicit emotion and tension in order to capture the reader, using sounds (and sometimes silence), visuals, movement and textual features to help tell the story and foster reader interest and drama.

CREATING LEARNING INTENTIONS AND SUCCESS CRITERIA  The intentions for student learning were discussed prior to completing the final three episodes,  Once episodes were all viewed, Success Criteria was discussed in order that students had something concrete to measure their work/success against, and to keep them on track during their writing of Episode 5,  Children noted that they needed to include key points such as Alice, her parents, travelling the globe, the story being told from Alice’s point of view, Brad, and Alice’s Ba-Xi game to name a few.

THE WRITING OF …  Students decided whether they wanted to write individually, or in pairs/groups,  They brainstormed, and talked about where Alice’s next adventure would be set, and at what stage in Alice’s life it would take place,  Many groups researched their country of choice, so they would include important landmarks or characters in their story lines,

THE WRITING OF …  Students dot-pointed a set of events, and then started writing their text. Many groups assigned members of the groups to write, while others story boarded.  Story boards had to also take into consideration the ‘feelings or tensions’ needed to effectively portray the story line. Eg. ‘silence’, ‘a shadowed picture – dark, dreary effect’ etc … students noted these emotive points along the bottom of their story boards for future reference.

HOW TO CREATE?  Students in 6Cathie have very different ranges of skill when it comes to using technologies, so they had choices regarding how they could create their Alice episodes,  The majority of students chose Power Point, as this tool is one they feel very confident using and it gave them the opportunity to create the movement necessary to give their story the ‘game’ effect,  Some groups chose to use Sony Vegas, and created their own sound effects using Sony Acid.

ALICE IN AFGHANISTAN BY LUKE, SAHASHRA AND BURAK OF 6CATHIE  This group of boys used Sony Vegas and Sony Acid to create their Alice episode.  They chose to make it a movie rather than an interactive game-based story. It’s been written so they can continue their work – ‘to be continued’ …  The collaboration on this story was excellent; the students were fully engaged from day 1 until completion.  They have chosen to keep it ‘open’ so they can revisit it at any time

ALICE IN AFGHANISTAN BY LUKE, SAHASHRA AND BURAK OF 6CATHIE  These particular students have successfully drawn out the main points of the story (minus seeing a ba-xi and seeing Brad),  They have made the story their own, with their own typical story writing themes and language,  They have included all of the points they worked together to include; tension, emotion, fear, relief, mystery and drama.

ALICE IN AFGHANISTAN BY LUKE, SAHASHRA AND BURAK OF 6CATHIE  The boys created suspense, and reader tension by writing a ‘trailer’ to be published a few days before their Inanimate Alice Episode 5 went online, and before we shared it with anyone at school …  You can see the trailer here or at Their full Episode 5 follows on the next slide.

Inanimate Alice in Afghanistan ‘Episode 5’ By Burak, Sahashra and Luke

EVALUATION …  It was highly evident that the Literacy engagement factor rose, especially with the male students, when viewing and creating (reading and writing) using digital literacies,  The time on task increased, active student participation increased across the entire class, students chose to write/create using Alice when faced with free portions of time across each day.

EVALUATION … ‘Inanimate Alice’ was presented to parents during our Student Led Conferences, and all were excited and interested to see where their children took the episodes, and were very happy to see their children engaging in digital literacies. I have enjoyed our ‘Alice’ experience immensely, and will be definitely using this rich resource again in the future! It is a wonderfully full text that allows students ‘entry’ at different levels and gives to them a view of literacy that fills their minds and stretches their imaginations Many thanks!