Calendar

ATOM and Metro Magazine
Presentation: Deborah Cohen
Topic: Harvesting Digital Technologies to engage digital learners
Sponsorship: Major Sponsor
Venue: ACMI and Melbourne Town Hall, Vic
Website: www.screenfutures.com

Summary: We live in a digital multi-media age for which new skills and strategies are required. There is now a dynamic integrative relationship between new literacies and traditional literacies which changes the whole continuum. We have to grasp that the use of new literacies generates innovation and literacies from now on will be constantly changing. (Prof. Len Unsworth, 2008)

Television, film and digital technologies are powerful vehicles that provide constant messages about culture, community values and identity. How do educators use these vehicles for positive development and discernment about what, who, how and why the messages are conceived and delivered.

Educators should encourage students to be critical and discerning consumers of the media technologies present to them everyday. Most importantly, today’s youth want to design and create their own messages (objects, opinions and communities) interacting with digital technologies. They are aware of the potentials of public display and avidly seek opportunities to communicate with their peers, globally and locally.

The presentation will highlight the development and application of ACTF’s digital education resources and encourage discussion on how educators can adopt interactive strategies to heighten learning outcomes.

ATOM and Metro Magazine
Presentation: Maggie Garrard
Topic: The Potential for Gaming within the Classroom
Sponsorship: Major Sponsor
Venue: ACMI and Melbourne Town Hall, Vic
Website: www.screenfutures.com

Summary: In the context of the new technologies, teachers should find new ways to work productively with children and help them become critical users and creators of digital media. They need a flexible curriculum that incorporates and values screen and digital literacies, aligned with authentic learning tasks where children are able to reflect and create on issues of importance to them, particularly identity, popular culture, and the role of digital texts in their lives.

Kahootz 3 is a powerful set of 3D multimedia tools that empowers students with the skills and tools to create their own media, allows them to be designers, inventors and storytellers, connects them to a diverse, engaged audience, is also an active, online community. Though it was designed for the use in primary schools, it is very adaptable for students who want to develop animation films and virtual games.

Kahootz Learning and Creative outcomes for students aged 7-15

• Creative skills: students develop fantastic 3D interactive environments through animation.
• Visual literacy skills: students create and construct their own text.
• Collaborative learning: students communicate and share stories, work together and transfer knowledge with other students from around the world.
• Maths and science skills: students develop knowledge about measurement, spatial awareness, estimation and problem solving and programming.

Science and Technology skills: students design, invent and construct.