One might ask, what have I learnt using a couple of entirely new platforms with an ambitious university assessment?
The initial enthusiasm of choosing to create an animation for my digital artefact, as I had never done that before, soon waned as the reality of my skill set started to dawn on me. My personal preference for dramatic arts over visual had me questioning my wisdom of format. However, as I am not one to shy away from a challenge, I persisted in doing something outside of my comfort zone. This is something I ask of the students I teach, so I needed to move beyond ideas of the perfect product to the process of learning. In essence, I took on the Positive Behaviour for Learning (PBL) active attitude which I ask of students. Translating aspects of this task into the classroom is something I hope to do, by encouraging students to find some of their own videos or games to add to the website so they can help showcase digital citizenship to other students.
The video by Chipflake (2021) humorously lets me know that I am not alone in animation challenges. For me, the seconds of soccer skills in the digital artefact was a lot more time in the creation process. I have plenty of room for improvement in the breadth of the creative arts!
I worked out early on that certain platforms did not have the ease of use behind the scenes which I needed in creating a website, so settled on creating using Google Sites. As this task is one which I hope to use in the school environment, the platform choice with easy accessibility for students swayed my decision. However, it was also because of the choice of creating something which I wanted students to use behind a school’s security network that I encountered a hiccup. While trying to combat the lack of YouTube access on school sites I attempted to embed videos in a different way only to discover that doing this meant that public access to the site was restricted. Thankfully changes behind the scenes for later school access are easily remedied.
As for my future career, while animator is definitely not on the cards, an active and inquisitive learner is!
Reference
Chipflake. (2021, October 29). The truth about being an animator [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/06tkx5uvbJ0