ICTs for Youth #4: Blogging

I decided to communicate this exploration of blogging site WordPress (kind of meta!) via a Piktochart report format. I wanted to think about WordPress as an ICT for youth because my nephew informed me that he uses WordPress in school. I’ll admit I was surprised and very intrigued.

The infographic-like report lends itself to brevity, but I would add that my challenges with WordPress at first were in learning the various options it offers. For example, the first time I used it I needed to produce text within a certain word count, so I typed in Microsoft Word and then pasted into a WordPress post. As soon as I did that, I noticed the word count at the bottom of the screen! Other “challenges” were simply attempts to learn how to edit beyond the text:  adding hyperlinks, editing images, figuring out how to caption images, and distinguishing between tags and categories. I also had to look up pingbacks and tagbacks, since I had no idea what they were.

The word cloud included in the report graphic below was created with all of the posts I had posted on WordPress to date.

ICTs for Youth #3: Image messaging

I decided to delve into Snapchat because it is the app that most strongly confirms that I am no longer “young”. Snapchat was the first version of social media that I just truly did not understand. I couldn’t wrap my head around what it was or why anyone would use it. Now that I understand it a little more, I still don’t plan to use it myself but do see its appeal to others.

My biggest challenge on Snapchat was not knowing how it worked, and not being able to figure it out. I just pressed icons because I didn’t know what else to do. Luckily I didn’t send anything anywhere it shouldn’t go, but I did end up accidentally downloading pictures to my phone a couple of times.

My first snap (is that the noun?) ended up my first accidental download… and I never did figure out how to rotate pictures

I wanted to use Snapchat the way a middle school or high school student might use it. My alma mater is hosting NCAA post-season basketball right now, so I snapped an exciting game. I did a mix of sending posts to a friend and adding posts to my “story”, which I found could then be revisited for 24 hours. Because I didn’t know how else to edit photos and videos (e.g. cropping), this also forced me to play with text and images that can be added to a photo to point out what I wanted to draw attention to.

It wasn’t until I checked out the preprogrammed content that I started to feel some hope in creating a media literacy activity using Snapchat. I was able to follow along with Scott Kelly’s return to earth from the international space station, watch coverage of Flint, Michigan and the Democratic debates, see videos and photos from the Chicago Cubs spring training, and even discover some sort of tattoo convention. I also scanned some of the traditional media channels with content available, like the Wall Street Journal and Buzzfeed (not a pair I imagine together anywhere else).

Buzzfeed had some images that could be saved and snapped — this was the first I saw that seemed kid- or teen-friendly to me

In both the stories and the media content, I see opportunities to teach about critical thinking in media literacy. Ads are sneakily placed within the other content, and some non-ad content is generated by businesses while others are done by individuals. It is all curated by some unknown entity. I envision an activity in which I would ask students to choose an event being covered on Snapchat and analyze who is generating the content, who is choosing what is included, and what might not have been included. I would also want students to think about why those choices might have been made. This is definitely more of a classroom activity than a workshop young people would actually choose to attend, but I think it would help teach important skills through an attractive medium.

ICTs for Youth #2: Short videos

I used a new medium to present thoughts about my first ICT for Youth project:  I created a video using GoAnimate, one of many websites I found that offered video editing tools. I checked out several similar websites prior to choosing this one, but many required payment. I actually started with a website called Digital Films, but I decided not to use it because the only option for female characters was to show a lot of midriff! I thought this was very odd (at best), and definitely not something I would choose to use with young people.

 

I began by using the GoAnimate tutorial, which walked me through the basic functions of the site. There were a lot of bells and whistles, but this helped de-mystify the seemingly huge tool bar. After creating a tutorial video, I started my own video about my first ICT activity. This included some information from the tutorial plus some trial and error – lots of trial and error. There were a lot of options for personalizing and editing the video, which was both useful and overwhelming.

I didn’t even get close to exploring all of the editing options, but I definitely developed a good working knowledge of this particular site and its most fundamental tools. From a brief glance around other similar sites, it seems that this knowledge would translate well if a different video creation website was preferred for some reason. However, I do think it would be a good idea for anyone facilitating a workshop or class to familiarize themselves with the specific site, since GoAnimate in particular has a lot of options that really dig into details, such as breaking down the length of transitions in ¼ second increments.

I would use this video creation tool with middle school or high school students to help them present information in a more interesting, fun way. For example, I’d want to teach them how to create videos for school projects (which would also require a teacher that would allow such a presentation). Since there are so many options, I think what would make the most sense would be to go through the basics, similar to what the tutorial does, then let each person work on an individual project and do one-on-one facilitation throughout the room.

Teaching GoAnimate or a similar tool to teenagers would also be a good opportunity to teach proper presentation skills. For example, it offers even more text transition styles (e.g. wipe, blinds, etc.) than a PowerPoint presentation. Often young presenters get too tempted by this kind of function and get a little carried away to the point of distraction for the audience. Peer editing may be a good way to mitigate this tendency. I also think peer editing would be helpful in teaching students how to gauge the clarity of their content and whether or not the text is allowed enough time on the screen for someone to read. These are both issues I personally struggled with, because conveying concepts in an animation is a little less straightforward than communicating those same ideas in writing.