In a world that is becoming more globally and digitally interconnected with each passing second there are new skills and knowledge needed from all learners from preK to career professionals in order to succeed. Our goal as educators is to prepare our learners for success in their communities, at school, work, and life. Digital media, mobile, computer, and other technology has firmly taken root in the place of these young learners lives. When children spend their lives outside of school surrounded by this technology, they can become bored in the classroom fairly easily. Students motivation levels are seen at high levels when they have a voice in their learning and if that learning is being supported with some form of technology. We are living in a generation of content producers and consumers of digital media. Studies show that most elementary aged kids are spending 6-10 hours a day consuming media. The world is run by digital media and consumed content. Learners are extremely motivated by technology and content creating. Learners are also extremely motivated and engaged in tasks and content they are personally interested in.
WeVideo is a cloud-based collaborative video editing service that helps learners from all over the world simply create, collaborate, and share content. The purchased version has unlimited storage, can be accessed from anywhere an internet connection is available with unlimited use of 1 million licensed and royalty-free video clips, images and music tracks and the ability to link videos with peers and instructors for easy collaboration, easily exported and shared via weblink or through google classroom/blogs, emails, etc.
*Increase Motivation: The primary learning purpose of WeVideo will be to develop learners intrinsic motivation for learning by becoming content creators
Become Producers: Learners will learn how to create artifacts and content rather than just consume them. They will become more media literate and learn how to troubleshoot and problem solve basic problems that arise in video editing programs.
Empower Students With Personalized Learning: Learners will be able to display understanding of assigned and self directed tasks by creating their own videos at their pace and place in authentic learning situations.
Collaborate & Share: Learners will be asked to work with peers, experts, and teachers to create their artifacts and share with the community or intended audience.
Foster Higher Level Critical Thinking Skills: Ask. Imagine. Plan. Create. Critique. Improve. Share. Reflect. Learners will display higher level skills such as asking essential questions, rationalization, evaluation, justification, reflection, collaboration, delegation, and interpretation through their artifacts.
There is a problem to be addressed by using the selected technology to increase motivation levels. I think the problem to be solved is engaging students at high levels of learning in fun and meaningful ways. Video creation experiences are framed by a meaningful problem to solve or a question to answer, at the appropriate level of challenge. When students first dive into video creation projects, they begin with the researching process by reviewing multiple sources of information (text, stills, and video) and choosing the visual representation that best articulates the message they want to convey. As students engage with media they acquire information to answer questions, generate hypotheses, make inferences, support opinions, confirm predictions, compare and contrast relationships, and create solutions. Additionally, students build communication skills through describing key concepts, rehearsing, presenting, active listening, and reflecting on created videos. WeVideo is uniquely poised to support and showcase critical thinking because of its ability to be extremely motivating. Our implementation of WeVideo is to focus on responsibility integrating technology in the classroom where the highly motivating piece of technology has a highly valuable learning component. In the book, Foundations of Learning and Instructional Design Technology: The Past, Present, and Future of Learning and Instructional Design Technology, by Richard E. West, S. Won Park (chapter 15 author) mentions self-determination theory discussing the different orientations of motivation. He mentions
“intrinsic motivation promotes learning, most learning activities are not intrinsically interesting to students. Students are often motivated to engage in an activity because it is instrumental to some outcomes separated from the activity itself, which indicates extrinsic motivation” (Park) Also in the book, Foundations of Learning and Instructional Design Technology: The Past, Present, and Future of Learning and Instructional Design Technology, by Richard E. West, Kelvin Seifert & Rosemary Sutton (chapter 16 authors) discuss motivation and theories on learning. “In addition to being influenced by their goals, interests, and attributions, students’ motives are affected by specific beliefs about the student’s personal capacities. In self-efficacy theory the beliefs become a primary, explicit explanation for motivation (Bandura, 1977, 1986, 1997). Self-efficacy is the belief that you are capable of carrying out a specific task or of reaching a specific goal. Note that the belief and the action or goal are specific. Self-efficacy is a belief that you can write an acceptable term paper, for example, or repair an automobile, or make friends with the new student in class.” (Seifert & Sutton) Or our case, the belief they can demonstrate their learning through a created video production. There are various technologies that have been developed to enhance learners’ motivation, including games and other apps/software. Audio/Video editing and content creating is another highly motivating form of technology that contains many attributes that will increase motivation, thus learners tend to be intrinsically motivated to want to learn with this type of software. “Educational researchers have studied this question from a variety of directions, and their resulting recommendations converge and overlap in a number of ways. For convenience, the recommendations can be grouped according to the basic need that they address, beginning with the need for autonomy. A major part of supporting autonomy is to give students choices wherever possible (Ryan & Lynch, 2003)...All students will feel more self-determined and therefore more motivated if they have choices of some sort. Teachers can also support students’ autonomy more directly by minimizing external rewards (like grades) and comparisons among students’ performance, and by orienting and responding themselves to students’ expressed goals and interests.” (Seifert & Sutton)
WeVideo gives students a voice and allows them to take ownership in the learning process. We Video will further efforts to make mindful use of screen time promoting motivation and efficacy by reinforcing innovation and creativity of content production over content consumption.
The primary goal of using WeVideo in the classroom is to see an increase in the intrinsic motivation of the learners. This use of these mobile technology aims to increase learners motivation by turning learners that are consumers into producers. We will hope to achieve this by authenticating and personalizing the learning experience for the learners by allowing them to have a voice and the creative control to ask essential questions, imagine the possibilities of their artifact and content to displayed, plan/outline and organize a way to make their possibility a reality, evaluate and justify their research and create content that displays the mastery of the concept/task. Learners will then critique their own work and collaborate with experts and peers with their criticisms, make edits and improvements if and where needed to their creations, share their findings, final product or artifact with the community. Learners will finally reflect on the journey of the assignment on their performance, what worked well, what didn’t, strengths/weaknesses, and the validity of their creations, how they interpret their work and the reaction from the community.
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