CHAPTER+6-+VISUAL+LEARNING+TOOLS-Videos+and+Photos

CHAPTER 6- VISUAL LEARNING TOOLS- Videos and Photos

__SUMMARY__ __﻿__ //"The old adage is that a picture is worth a thousand words; for today's young people, the picture is all."// With so much emphasis on visual media, students need to develop the skills to understand the power of the various media and the skills to use media to communicate. The Partnership for 21st Century Skills (2004) includes media literacy as an essential skill, requiring that the student be able to analyze media and create media products. In order to accomplish this, the student not only needs to understand both how and why media messages are constructed, but also understand the purpose in order to use media effectively. When a student can communicate their projects to others through the use of media, it promotes higher-order thinking skills by offering the opportunity to collaborate with others while receiving feedback from a real audience. Students take ownership in their work when using media to create projects, therefore developing a commitment to learning. The two most important methods of communicating through media are digital storytelling and the making of documentaries. __DIGITAL STORYTELLING__ __﻿__ Students develop the ability to think logically by organizing their thoughts and communicating their ideas to each other. Digital stories are an effective tool because they are a professional way to present their ideas to an audience as well as store them in e-portfolios.

Teachers can encourage students to take, edit and include their own photos into their digital story, as well as using others' photos that are stored online at other sites just as [|Flickr], using [|Creative Commons]attributions. When creating digital stories, students and teachers often include images created by others that are stored online. Creative Commons is a nonprofit organization that is devoted to expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share by releasing copyright licenses for free to the public.

Because there are so many visual tools available, Solomon and Schrum provide a list on pages 107-108. Some popular digital story sites that are worth looking at are for digital storytelling are [|Jing], [|Photosynth] or [|Photobucket].

__VIDEO DOCUMENTARIES__ Creating video documentaries in the classroom encourages students to collaborate with others and engage in hands on learning. Students are much more likely to retain and understand subject matter when creating, researching and sharing as well as take ownership of their learning. Documentary filmaking can offer teachers a natural formative assessment tool by giving them the ability to evaluate student learning from the perspective of applying skills rather than remembering facts for tests.

The ultimate achievement is for students to post their videos on a video sharing site that is not only available to the student and teacher, but also to the world. [|YouTube] is the most commonly used, but because most districts block that site for securty reasons, [|TeacherTube] is an effective alternative.

__CREATIVE WAYS TO USE VIDEO AND PHOTO TOOLS FOR TEACHING AND LEARNING?__ Videos and photo tools can be extremely effective when teaching a foreign language! Students can use [|Goanimate] to make cartoons in another language-looking at words alone in a foreign language can not only be difficult to interpret, but can be very boring. Putting foreign language to cartoons puts life into the language and makes it more fun for the student to learn!

Teachers find it extremely helpful to video lessons that prove to be more difficult and challenging to teach. [|Photo Story 3] can be used to create tutorials of step-by-step instructions to help students understand the concept better.

For free interactive, online tools, from Intel, visit [|www.intel.com/education/tools].