John Seely Brown, in his address on the Global One-Room Schoolhouse, underscores the importance of the teacher giving students permission to "play" in order to harness the full power of these new technologies and, subsquently, new ways of knowledge creation and knowledge sharing.
The videos below offer such an example of play.
Although I did give the boys some guidelines as a framework (e.g. "your media creation is going to tell about a typical day at 'school' here in Buenos Aires, and it must include 3-5 slides, 3-4 photos or video, and more than one colour of text/font or handwriting, and it must be no more than five minutes in length"), the rest was really up to them. They chose the colour palette, they elected what to include or leave out, they decided which photos to take and to use in their presentation, and they, ultimately, recorded their own voice, lending their unique perspective on our home schooling adventures here in BA.
I am hopeful that learning activities like this will provide Alex and Simon with powerful skills and the confidence to use apps like Explain Everything for more engaging and effective subject-specific presentations later on in the school year, while equipping them with some of the tech skills they will need to thrive in our ever-changing media world.
Alex's Video | Simon's Video |