Digital Media: Adapting the classroom to enhance learning

Image source: http://bwdisrupt.businessworld.in/article/The-Future-of-News-Four-Digital-Media-Trends-That-Will-Shape-Journalism-in-2017/22-05-2017-118644/

Welcome back! 

In this week's instalment of using technology to improve pedagogies for the contemporary classroom, I will be reviewing how media can be brought into the classroom to enhance learning experiences and fully engage different learner types to improve content understanding. Not only this, exposing students to digital media in educational contexts will improve individuals’ digital citizenship to adequately equip them for post-graduation life.

What is it?

Broadly defined, digital media is normally information displayed and associated with non-text communication, however, can include text at times (text boxes, subtitles, etc.) (Central Queensland University, 2022). Media has evolved over the past 200 years, initially beginning as newspapers before transforming to be digitally available to millions of people around the world. With this accessibility, digital media is an untapped tool for educators of the 21^st century to harness to (like media) transform the classroom to improve their contemporary classroom.

What about fake media though?

Yes, with media becoming so easily accessible, this has led to many media outlets reporting on fake news to fit personal agendas and impact the consumer's views, however, with proper practice, this can be minimised.

How can I protect myself and students from fake media?

Protecting students from fake media begins with protecting yourself as the educator from exposure to fake media. By teaching educators digital citizenship, teachers can identify how to interact with media sources safely, ethically, and responsibly for educational purposes. To do this, educators should be informed on their topics, as well as ensure sources intended to be used in the classroom are cited and/or coming from experts. Once this is achieved, students can then be introduced to using digital media, how to interact with it, and how to ensure the information they are seeing is not distorted.

How can digital media aid in classroom learning?

Media can be used by educators for direct instruction, active learning, and student projects. Available digital media can be used in class lessons to facilitate expert knowledge being provided to new learners. Although a teacher-centred approach, this stimulates student interest and develops knowledge of the material being taught, however, should not be the sole use of existing media in the classroom. Active learning is learning involving more of a social approach to teaching lessons. This is where the class lesson can be split between teacher and student input, this promotes cooperative learning in groups or class discussions on different media examples experienced in the lesson. This is also where students can build on their own digital citizenship by reflecting on how useful or effective the source can be. This learning approach also encourages deeper learning with aspects of problem-solving embedded into the lesson structure. Finally, student-created media such as projects involves a high level of engagement and when implemented correctly targets, the three main learning styles identified in students (visual, auditory, and kinaesthetic). This aspect of media use in the class is customisable for teachers by setting safe boundaries such as topics and sites accessible, and for students who have the freedom to choose how to display information and what they can create with their content understanding creating a student-focused learning environment.

With this, educators can create a sequence of lessons that allow for a traditional explicit teaching model to be transformed into a digitally adapted method capable of better engaging students. This can be achieved when a teacher shows new information, from this, students and the teacher discuss topics and the credibility of sites before finally flipping the classroom to the students giving them the freedom in class to create their own digital media such as videos or storytellings of their newfound knowledge. This pedagogical approach allows for better enquiry-based and constructive learning as well as promoting problem-solving skills by giving students information and allowing them to create something with that. By incorporating digital media into the classroom, a more collaborative environment is created where students can showcase their work targeting the major learning types. This method outperforms traditional pedagogical approaches where evidence has shown that students on average retain 90% of information when teaching others which occurs during active learning and student-created media as mentioned earlier (Hobdell, 2022).

An example of this approach in practice that follows the Blooms SAMR model can be seen here for a geography sequence of lessons:

Substitution – Direct instruction – Students are exposed to selected digital tools to enhance content such as pictures, sounds, videos, graphics, or if available visual augmented reality to show land formation processes.

Augmentation – Active learning – Students can use the learned knowledge to source their own information in groups for land formations and earth processes involved, assessing the credibility and validity of media found.

Modification – Active learning – Students and teacher discuss how real-world land formations have occurred using digital tools such as google earth. This allows the teacher to facilitate learning to ensure content is being understood before turning the class into a student-centred environment

Redefinition – Student-created media – Students create a short video for class viewing and interaction with or create a story through Pecha Kucha. The aim should be to show how plate boundaries interact to make land formations and the earth processes that are involved. Their videos can be presented using clay models, images, or embedding short clips of processes involved and explaining the processes taking place. From this, students can reflect on their knowledge and draw from peer discussions on how this can be improved.

By including digital tools to enhance traditional pedagogies, new teaching methods derived can better coincide with learning styles identified in the Kolb and Honey Mumford model:

 

Image source: https://bonlinelearning.com/learning-styles-in-elearning/

By using digital tools in classrooms, the overall learning experiences for students can be enhanced and better adapted to the modern world while accommodating different learning styles. Teachers must recognise that just like themselves, young adolescents are surrounded by mediascapes that impact their lives and should be capitalised on by educators as a tool for engaging with contemporary students in the contemporary classroom. Moreover, improving the classroom's cumulative digital citizenship will help a student use technology responsibly well beyond the scope of the school environment.  

 

References

Bonline Learning. (2021). Accommodating Learning Styles in eLearning. Retrieved April 04, 2022, from Bonline Learning: https://bonlinelearning.com/accommodating-learning-styles-in-elearning/

Central Queensland University. (2022). Topic 4: Digital Tools 2 - Simple digital media. Retrieved April 03, 2022, from Digital Pedagogies in Secondary Schools: https://moodle.cqu.edu.au/mod/book/view.php?id=2413587

Hobdell, G. (Director). (2022). EDSE12024 Digital Pedagogies Tutorial [Motion Picture]. Retrieved April 05, 2022, from https://moodle.cqu.edu.au/course/view.php?id=36139&section=9