Collaborative Learning with IWB's and Finn Cragg's Emu

By using an IWB connected to a DVD Player or computer you can immediately conduct a range of collaborative learning lessons developing audio and visual literacy and establishing the foundations for creative story writing.

Here is a sample procedure plan which scaffolds learning, spring boarding from viewing Finn Cragg’s “EMU and The Flying Doctor” animation to developing creative interpretations and animation critiques highlighting the importance of audio on a visual narrative, introducing story boarding, writing and creating digital stories. Finn Cragg’s stimulating animated content and storyboard resources, together with the IWB enable the story creation process to be taught and for a group-devised narrative to be created with ease.

The teacher or student scribe writes directly to the IWB screen utilising the Finn Cragg multimedia - storyboards or stills. Each page should be saved as it is “written” by the class so the young storytellers can keep a copy of the story they have created.

1. Set up your equipment Use a DVD player or computer that can play the DVD connected to the IWB. Test all is working prior to the lesson.
2. Finn Cragg’s “EMU and the Flying Doctor” DVD has two animation choices that can be played – the “Country” and the “Club Mix”. They are the same animation, which runs for approximately 5 minutes, but each is set to a different soundtrack.
3. Play the first animation.
4. Discuss the story with the class e.g. “What was that about?” "Who were the characters?" What did they do?" "What parts did you like the best?"
   Many students will show a high level of existing knowledge about animations and multimedia. Build upon this knowledge and develop new insights, understandings and guide critical analysis.
5. The animated story is set to a cinematic soundtrack (with no character speaking) enabling wide interpretative possibilities for the students. This enables them to understand how variations exist within audiences where viewers respond differently to the same production. Discuss the importance of sound in movies. Perhaps play the soundtrack without the visuals and identify sound effects, recalling what part of the movie they were linked with.
6. Play the second animation. Discuss the ways in which this one may seem to be different than the first version, and how the different audio track changes the pace, mood and style of the story. "Which one do they like the best?" "Why?" "Which would be more suitable to be played at an Australia Day ceremony?" "Which would be more appealing to a teenage audience?"
7. Find out which version the students prefer. Play it again.
8. Discuss further points the students wish to raise.
9. Introduce the importance of Storyboards by shwoing the on-screen storyboard stills. These 20 storyboard frames reflect each sequence of the story.
10. Tab through each of the 20 frames to show how the storyboard provides a visual summary of the animated story.
11. Discuss the difference between character dialogue writing and writing a narration, by giving an example on the first storyboard slide. Get input from the class to decide on what will work best for this first slide. Choose a scribe (or teacher to scribe) and invite ideas for each storyboard with appropriate dialogue and narration. You will find that students begin to develop a back-story, coing to an agreement about the names of the characters, enriching their vocabulary. Older students may benefit from utilising a thesaurus. Collaborative storywriting is a rich and authentic classroom task, which the students will thoroughly enjoy. If you want to take it further you could go to Step 12.
12. Utilising the on-screen slides of the 3D stills, the class can now develop a comic-style Digital Tale by using speech bubbles.
13. To change the story, the images can be re-sequenced or entirely new images added either from the Random stills included or from other external sources. To customise a picture, draw directly on the image with a programme like Microsoft Paint, KidsPix or Adobe PhotoShop as marks can be made to alter any of Finn Cragg images because the usual copyright restrictions have been lifted for use in digital storytelling education.