Graphic Novels in English - Digital Ideas

For the first time some English classes can now use Graphic Novels as one of the literary options. This is part of the redevelopment of the Language A and B courses. With this new change, we took the opportunity to work with Stuart McAlpine to trial some new tools that would support the students learning. The students have been looking at the book Blankets by Craig Thompson.

Digital Ideas:

We needed to use some tools which would allow students to take snippets out of the novel and to then explain the ideas and motifs that were being presented by the author. The simplest tool we discovered was Skitch. This allows students to take some pictures of the novel using the in-built camera on the macbook. Skitch is perhaps the easiest tool for students to add quick annotations to the image and then export the images back to any other program. A nice example is below.

Another idea to develop this further was getting the students to develop a simple narration that identified the motifs of snow, blankets and caves throughout several pages of the text. The technical aspects were intentional kept simple, and the students had to focus on the speaking. The basic process was to use Keynote to add several screenshots from either Skitch or PhotoBooth. Then students chose the play menu and then recorded the presentation with their commentary. The students had some simple notes to help them speak and worked in pairs. Here is a nice example from Christina Yang and Jo (copied with permission)

Reflection:

This was a good opportunity to work with the students, as the activities successfully transformed they way that the students learnt about the novel. Instead of putting ideas on paper and referring to the images from the novel, or perhaps using photocopies, they could annotate directly onto the pages and make specific links to elements of snow, blankets and caves that were being reinforced by the author Craig Thompson. These ideas could be saved back to their notes for revision.

The audio recordings also prompted the students to analyse the novel in more depth, than they would have otherwise. At the same time it also supported their oral presentation skills which are being assessed separately at the end of the course.

The downsides of the activity was the technical skill development. This always takes time, but I believe students have developed a simple skill set of annotating an image and developing a Keynote recording. The sharing of students work needed some refinement. In the end we shared these to the classes Google Site so they are accessible in the future. This required students to upload the video to their own Google Docs first and then fiddle with the sharing settings. They could then add the Google Video to the class page. This did end up with each students being able to watch the recordings, but the process was cumbersome.

Presentation to Staff:

Working towards a Digital Classroom

This workshop covers a variety of tools that teachers at UWCSEA have available to use in the classroom. Some of the tools are based on the internet and others are part of the software available on the student and staff laptops.

We can classify digital tools according to which aspect of learning they best support. These main groupings of tools are...

• Research and Information Fluency
• Collaboration and Communication
• Critical Thinking and Problem Solving and Decision Making
• Creativity and Innovation

These ideas are part of the NETS (National Education Technology Standards) framework which provides articulation of how we could use technology in the classroom from grades K-12. The other two aspects of the NETS framework are Digital Citizenship and Technology Operations and concepts.

Below is an evolving list of what we could use at UWCSEA Dover:

Blogger

A classroom blog can be an important part of your classroom practise and can be used in lots of different ways. Generally a blog is good if your are showing unique pieces of information over a period of time. The material can be sorted using tags, which highlight the key ideas in each post.

Blogs can be a weekly class summary completed by students, an immersion language site, a record of what is happening in class to communicate with parents, or a way to differentiate and extend more able students. Individual student reflective blogs will eventually be on a similar, but different school based system called Mahara.

Basic instructions:

1. Visit the website http://blogger.com
2. Sign in with your Google Apps username and password eg. abc@gapps.uwcsea.edu.sg
3. Create your profile, which describes who you are, perhaps Mr Smith.
4. Then click to create a blog
5. Choose the name of your blog and you can choose the specific URL address.
6. Then choose the theme. This can be changed later
7. Once this is complete you can write your first post. Think about adding pictures, videos.
8. Then go click on the B icon at top and back to settings, permissions to invite people to your website. 
9. When viewing your website you can type view after the URL at see a very nice interface of your posts. eg http://doverdlc.blogspot.com/view/

Babelwith.me

This is a simple chatroom website, which allows you to create a private room for your students to discuss a topic or issue. You create a conversation in Babelwith.me and then share this link with students. When a student navigates to the link, they will have to enter a name to participate. There is also some simple language translation aspects of this site, which students might like to experiment with.

Try this link to see an example of how it works. http://www.babelwith.me/WuHrf

Skitch

Click here to download the program to your laptops. You can also give students this link if you would like to use this in class. This is a relatively new piece of software.

This application allows you to take screen shots and then annotate, add text and export the image or very quickly to your desktop. It would be really good in Science, Humanities, Geography where students could find a picture or diagram from the internet then add some ideas and export the finished image back to their notes or desktop.