ETL533 – Literature in Digital Environments – Assessment 2: PART A
Review 3 – Stage 3: What things were in a WW1 trench?
BBC Bitesize provides resources to support students, parents, and teachers to learn, revise and teach children of ages 3 – 16+. The website supports all curriculum areas and units linked to the curriculum taught in England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales and is available in four languages. Many of these units are comparable to the NSW Education curriculum and the one that I have focussed on is a history unit about World War One. The KS2 (Year 5 and 6) history topic of World War One aligns with the NSW Education Stage 3 and 4 History content.
I will be reviewing the interactive graphic Activity 1: What things were in a trench? (image 3.1).
This graphic can be found as a part of the non-fiction webpage Year 6 World War One, and the learner guide What was life like in a World War One trench? This digital graphic has a hypermedia multimodal format, recorded voice, images, and text to explore. This activity portion of the webpage follows a variety of information sections about World War One trench life, with a quiz at the end consisting of five multiple choice questions to test your knowledge about the preceding information.
This type of infographic, with multimodal hypertext and commentary, offers students a different way of thinking about the topic and extends their understanding of the text (Dalton, 2013, p. 649). With the popularity of graphic novels and manga genres, the appeal of this type of image-based learning and interaction with the text is another option for visual digital literacy with Stage Three students (Dalton, p. 648).
There are ten different objects that can be highlighted individually and explored further (image 3.1). Each highlighted image can be clicked to reveal a combined recording of a British ‘soldier’s’ voice (image 3.2), followed by a black and white photograph from WW1 (image 3.3) and text describing the image (image 3.4).
Each sound recording is of a first-person account and is under one minute to ensure full engagement (eg, Transcribed from BBC Bitesized (2022). Rats: “those rotten rats, we can’t get rid of them no matter how hard we try. I shot five of them the other day myself, no sooner were they gone, than ten more came running…”).
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The sound recordings were accessible via an iPhone (using Safari), though were “not supported” to play on my desktop computer via any platform. I discovered that my IP address is the problem as it is not registered in the UK. This limits its use in Australian classrooms.
Following each sound recording is a still image, a black and white photograph from WW1 which clearly depicts the scene.
Finally, textual information explains each image in an authentic and comprehensive manner, while expressed in appropriate and understandable language for the intended audience, children in years 5 and 6. Thus aligning with the NSW English syllabus outcomes for Stage 3, especially EN3-3A (NESA, 2021).
Each image compels the reader to seek more information about the trenches, which can be found in other sections of this webpage. The reader has the opportunity to extend their knowledge about WW1 via the other learner guides on the topic of World War One. This multimodal hyperlinked infographic may also be a way to extend students’ knowledge about a topic. Using this infographic as a starting point to creating their own multimodal hyperlinked image, which could include their own voice recordings, additional information about the topic, and hyperlinks to other findings and would make a valuable assessment tool to evaluate their comprehension and continuing to develop their “interest and skill in analysing, critiquing, and responding to text” (Dalton, 2013, p. 649).
Resources
BBC Bitesize. (2022). KS2 What was life like in a World War One trench? BBC. https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/topics/zqhyb9q/articles/z8sssbk
Dalton, B. (2013). Engaging Children in Close Reading: Multimodal Commentaries and Illustration Remix. The Reading Teacher, 66(8), 642–649. https://doi.org/10.1002/trtr.1172
NSW Education Standards Authority. (2021). Reading and viewing: Stage 3. https://educationstandards.nsw.edu.au/wps/portal/nesa/k-10/learning-areas/english-year-10/english-k-10/content/893
