Journal #4 Finding Students Who Learn With Media

Bull, G, Alexander, C, & Fester, B. (2010). Finding students who learn with media.    Learning and Leading with Technology, 37(5), Retrieved from    http://www.learningandleading-digital.com/learning_leading/201002#pg38

In this article the authors promote the use of online web based tools such as Primary Access Movie Maker in the classroom.  Primary Access is a free website that has a movie making application which enables the user to construct their own documentary short films.  It is a great resource that allows children who learn well with technological tools in the classroom to interactively engage in subject content.  The creators of Movie Maker also created Storyboard which is basically the same as Movie Maker except its less complicated, allowing educators to incorporate the movie making lesson into one class period instead of three.  I find this to be an important aspect of the programming on Primary Access as teachers can decide what program their students will learn depending on the teacher’s allocated time for the lesson.

Describe one lesson that you, as an educator, could utilize in the classroom involving either Movie Maker or Storyboard.  I could see myself doing a Biology lesson on the Periodic Table in which each of the students in my class would be assigned to present a short movie on whatever element they were assigned to research.  Each student’s movie would have short films and graphics of individual elements.  By making this assignment electronic, the students would be able to visually see the differences in size and quality of one atom of each element. 

How could you verify that all of the students in the class were in fact on task and not just playing around with the moving making program?  If I were to assign an assignment which allowed student access to computers, I would constantly be walking around the room to answer questions and make sure that everyone was on task.  I would also have the students present their short films to the whole class.  The student’s will most likely want to stay on task so that they have a fantastic film to present to their peers as no one will want to receive a bad evaluation from the peer review.