Assessment 1 Part B Proposal
Topic:
English: Digital Literacy, Year 10
Task:
Students choose a news story and create 2 You tube videos on the same news story. Each must feature a commentary aspect on the news story, which represent different perspectives.
Platform:
Youtube.com
Rationale:
My students appear to have very limited experience of using online tools to create, rather than consume. Svensson, Wilk & Gustaffson Aman’s (2022) study concludes that students are stronger in basic skills such as information search and source criticism rather than advanced and arguably the more useful skills of critical thinking and analysing, interpreting, and creating information. The study suggests that a worthy solution would be to increase collaborative teaching of the skill across librarians and school faculties (Svensson, Wilk & Gustaffson Aman, 2022).
Hopefully having the opportunity to create online material in the same format as their consumption will develop their digital literacy, once they have followed the steps of the Youtube creators. Beckman, Bennett & Lockyer (2019) found that technology practices show distinct disparities across high school students and suggest that this could be explained more accurately through how the students are using technology at school and outside of school.
72% of Australian high school students use Youtube. For this reason, rather than using an educational platform to create their material such as Elementari, I have decided to use this extremely well-known platform instead. I was inspired by the Netflix ‘Depp vs Heard’ (Cooper, Lazarus & Sanderson, 2023) a documentary on the Hollywood domestic abuse case, which focuses on the massive and unprecedented influence social media content and its audience had over the court case. Joyce (2019) acknowledges the importance of digital literacy skills renaming the core foundation skills as Language, Literacy, Numeracy and Digital Literacy (LLND) skills.
Word count: 267
References
Beckman, K., Bennett, S. & Lockyer, L. (2019) Reproduction and Transformation of Students’ Technology Practice: The Tale of Two Distinctive Secondary Student Cases. British Journal of Educational Technology. Accessed on 14 Aug, 2023 from https://bera-journals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/bjet.12736
Cooper, E., Lazarus, S. & Sanderson, G. (2023) Depp Versus Heard (limited TV series). Netflix. Accessed on 17 Aug, 2023 from https://www.netflix.com/
ESafety Commisioner (2021) The Digital Lives of Aussie Teens. ESafety Research. The Australian Government. Accessed on 14 Aug, 2023 from https://www.esafety.gov.au/sites/default/files/2021-02/The%20digital%20lives%20of%20Aussie%20teens.pdf
Joyce, S. (2009). Expert Review of Australia’s Vocational Educational and Training System. Department of Employment and Workplace Relations. The Australian Government. Accessed on 14 Aug, 2023 from https://www.dewr.gov.au/expert-review-australias-vet-system
Lei, J. (2010) Quantity versus Quality. A New Approach to Examine the Relationship between Technology Use and Student Outcomes. British Journal of Educational Technology. 41 (3). Accessed on 14 Aug, 2023 from https://bera-journals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1467-8535.2009.00961.x
Svensson, T., Wilk, J. & Gustafsson Aman, K. (2022) Information Literacy Skill and Learning Gaps – Students’ Experiences and teachers’ Perceptions in Interdisciplinary Environmental Science. The Journal of Academic Librarianship. 48 (1) Accessed on 14 Aug, 2023 from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0099133321001567
Hi Philippa, I enjoyed reading this proposal and can imagine that learners could have a lot of fun with it too.
I’m curious about the quantity of videos being produced here. Is each student producing two videos or is it that the whole class collectively produces two videos? I see some similarities with debating tasks whereby there are, for instance, four topics and then the class is divided into eight groups with each taking one side of the four topics. Apologies if I’ve misunderstood your intentions here.
However, what struck me about your proposal is that students either indivdiually or in groups would be making a video about both sides, which I think could be fantastic for creating a more rounded understanding of issues in the news. Are you proposing to make two videos yourself, each showing a different side? That would model how one person could cover different perspectives.
You mention that learners are often good at research. They may still need some help in getting different perspectives. There are some resources that could assist with this. Echo Online (Echo Education Services, n.d.) doesn’t look great but does cover different sides of contemporary issues. Proquest’s Australian and New Zealand Newstream (ProQuest, 2023) is a powerful database, although students may need some media sensitivity input to understand how to identify which sources are more ‘left’ or ‘right’ biased. Of course, both of these need accounts through the school. On wider issues that often occur in newsstories, resources like Britannica’s ProCon (Encyclopedia Britannica, 2023) or the community platform Kialo (Kialo, 2023) offer points on both sides of common debates. Although I appreciate there may be policies in place against it, it seems likely that students may also use generative artifical intelligence services, which can quickly provide reasons ‘for’ and ‘against’ something. My points here are simply that learners may need some help getting ‘the other side’ for some issues.
For video creation inspiration you may well already be thinking about videos from Behind The News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 2023). Although, taking a different slant, the Teen Fact Checking Network (Poynter Institute, 2023) videos are also engaging and may inspire.
Lastly, if I were doing this myself, I wouldn’t be surprised if students wanted to use a wide range of different production tools on their phones or computers for their videos. As YouTube is really a publishing platform, rather than a creation tool, you may want to choose a specific platform to make a model video, and that may need an instructional video too.
That seems like a lot of comment about set up and modelling but what I love about your proposal is that it asks students to critically engage with newstories and respond creatively.
References
Australian Broadcasting Corporation. (2023). Behind the news. https://www.abc.net.au/btn
Echo Education Services. (n.d.). Echo online. https://www.echoeducation.com.au/
Encyclopedia Britannica. (2023). ProCon. https://www.procon.org/
Kialo. (2023). Kialo. https://www.kialo.com/
Poynter Institute. (2023). Teen fact-checking network. https://www.poynter.org/news/tfcn/
ProQuest. (2023). Australia and New Zealand newsstream. https://proquest.libguides.com/anznewsstream
Philippa, it’s important to follow task instructions – you did not include your blog post URL in the EASTS submission. As you don’t have widgets for navigation or a menu on your Thinkspace, and for some reason it does not show up in “recent posts”, that made it tricky to find.
You have provided some useful research to support your purpose, but it is at the expense of information about subject area, context and audience. You also don’t mention what your actual project will be – is it an exemplar of the type of videos you will have the students create? I also note that YouTube is primarily a video hosting platform, not a video creation tool, unless you intend to have students live stream.
Significant formatting issues with references, both in-text and end references. Also noting that only sources cited in your work should be included in your end reference list.
Please touch base with me to clarify your project and your intended tool/s for creation as soon as you can – tcroft@csu.edu.au
Thanks, Tehani
Hi Phillipa,
YouTube is a popular platform for students to consume content, and your proposal for students to create news stories that can be posted and viewed online is an engaging idea.
The Australian Curriculum (2023) has the renamed ‘Digital Literacy’ as a General Capability, where your proposal meets the ‘Creating’ element. This has three sub elements- plan and design, create content and respect intellectual property.
To address the sub-elements, your students could use a storyboarding technique to plan and design their videos. Canva have a great range of storyboard templates that may be beneficial.
In relation to creating content, your proposal may need to specify which platform will be used for video creation. For example, are they filming and editing using Photobooth or iMovie before uploading to You Tube? You Tube does not have direct filming, however they offer a built in video editor with some helpful tips offered by Whitney, (2023) and Brown, (2022).
To respect intellectual property, the task could require students to include references to the original news stories.
References
Australian Curriculum. (2023). General Capabilities: Digital Literacy. https://v9.australiancurriculum.edu.au/f-10-curriculum.html/general-capabilities/digital-literacy?element=0&sub-element=0
Brown, J. (2022, November 22). [Primal Video]. How to edit videos with the YouTube video editor. [Video]. You Tube.
Whitney, L. (2023, May 26). Want to be a YouTuber? Here’s how to edit your YouTube videos for free. PCMag. https://au.pcmag.com/video-editing/87772/how-to-edit-your-youtube-videos
Hi Philippa, I enjoyed reading this proposal and can imagine that learners could have a lot of fun with it too.
You mention that learners are often good at research. They may still need some help in getting different perspectives. There are some resources that could assist with this. Echo Online (Echo Education Services, n.d.) doesn’t look great but does cover different sides of contemporary issues. Proquest’s Australian and New Zealand Newstream (ProQuest, 2023) is a powerful database, although students may need some media sensitivity input to understand how to identify which sources are more ‘left’ or ‘right’ biased. Of course, both of these need accounts through the school. On wider issues that often occur in newsstories, resources like Britannica’s ProCon (Encyclopedia Britannica, 2023) or the community platform Kialo (Kialo, 2023) offer points on both sides of common debates.
Lastly, if I were doing this myself, I wouldn’t be surprised if students wanted to use a wide range of different production tools on their phones or computers for their videos. As YouTube is really a publishing platform, rather than a creation tool, you may want to choose a specific platform to make a model video.
References
Echo Education Services. (n.d.). Echo online. https://www.echoeducation.com.au/
Encyclopedia Britannica. (2023). ProCon. https://www.procon.org/
Kialo. (2023). Kialo. https://www.kialo.com/
ProQuest. (2023). Australia and New Zealand newsstream. https://proquest.libguides.com/anznewsstream