DIY Energy session at Newick School

On 27 March 2009 we ran an all-day session with a Year 4 class at Newick Primary School in Sussex, UK. In the morning session, students built and tested wind turbines in our DIY Energy activity. In the afternoon students created photo-stories about how they constructed their wind turbines. The activities were augmented with teacher-created resources including a Powerpoint presentation and worksheet shown below:



We documented the day, collecting the following data:

• 10 digital comic files


• 4 videos from mobile phone


• 13 photos from mobile phone of windmills and worksheets


• 6 audio clips


• 1 video


• 'Making my windmill' folder of photos used by students in photostories


• Template for photostories

The teacher integrated the activities into the current science topic of sustainable energy, and began the session with a discussion about solar panels, tidal turbines, and wind turbines.

During the introduction to the wind turbine construction activity, the teacher showed slides of turbines created by other students, and gave a demonstration of how to create a simple fan. The following was projected on the digital whiteboard:



As students constructed their turbines in pairs, the teacher took photographs which were then downloaded and made available on the network for use in the afternoon session making photo stories. Here are a few:





One pair decided to have two sets of blades going different directions:

Yeah but I was thinking we make one of those um, one of them. The orange one. And then um, put it on behind, or on top. So we've got two really good engines running, two disks running at the same time. That's a good idea isn't it?

[...]

We have a 2 wheel one. One's gonna go one way, the other's gonna go a different way. Double the power... Double the power, the more energy you get from the wind.

[...]

Student 1: I think we should start decorating. Should we just do this one?

Student 2: No, we need double the power.... If one of them falls off, we've still got one blowing

S1: Yeah, well the thing is, it's not really gonna get a lot of wind on the back of that is it

Some completed wind turbines:







In the afternoon there were network problems so the teacher suggested students use the built-in Microsoft paint program to draw pictures of their windmills. Students clearly had good basic skills in using office and simple graphics programs as well as the PC interface. A good deal of time was spend copying images from the teachers laptop to a students using USB sticks. Finally, with the LAN came back to life the remaining students were able to access the images, but only very slowly, and when they tried to save their work it often failed.

Each turbine was tested in front of the class and a “score” (energy generated) read from an ammeter. Here is the testing apparatus we provided:



Normal table fan used for testing:



More images were taken and a class winner was announced. A final photo of the entire class outside with their turbines was taken before documentation using ComicLife began.

One student said, 'I like it because with the windmill pictures I actually managed to fill the boxes with pictures of me!'

Students again presented their comics during a plenary session toward the end of the workshop and again there was much applause.

Photo story session at Newick School

On 20 March 2009, Year 4 students at Newick Primary School used Comic Life software to make a one-page photo story titled 'A day at our school,' for the purpose of initiating communication with Silanga School in Kenya, as part of this project as well as the VeSeL project. Two researchers from this project were on hand to document the session and offer technical help.

Preparation

We created the template pictured below. The teacher took pictures beforehand of different activities around the school which students could use (using cameras which we supplied for the VeSeL project). We also set up simple blogs for each school, and before the session the class talked about their typical school day and about how conditions at Silanga School might be different. Students thought for example that school assemblies are different, having seen pictures of Silanga School gathered outside under the trees instead of in a large hall where Newick's assemblies are held; they thought the school might not have tables or a library; one student suggested that Silanga wouldn't have such a large digital whiteboard, having only a single laptop.

In preparation the teacher also created a text document titled 'Steps to success' which contained specific steps for students to follow, including opening the document, saving into their folder, adding photos and text.



The session

At the start of the session the teacher demonstrated Comic Life in front of the class on the digital whiteboard, showing how to open the template, drag photos into panels, and add text boxes. She described adding text to using Microsoft Word, an indication that students had used Word previously.

Most students worked on their own, though some had to pair up since not all laptops were available. Pairs had the option of collaborating on one photo story or two. Even for students working on their own there was a lot of sharing, communication and collaboration, as can be seen in the following images taken from video.











Students received support from the teacher, other students, and the researchers present. For example, one student showed another where to locate the template document. The teacher showed another how to scroll through the pictures and drag them into the document. A student asked one of the researchers how to make speech bubbles without arrows.

The students generally accomplished the task within the allotted time (1 hour) and near the end the teacher told students that anyone who had finished could 'have a fiddle' at making a second photo story of their choosing. This resulted in a good deal of experimentation

At the end of the session students presented their photo stories to the class, as seen below.









Results

Most students' photostories tended to replicate the one the teacher demonstrated at the start of the session. However they demonstrated creativity within this structure, for example using speech bubbles to have pictured students say what they were doing, or giving labels or speech bubbles to inanimate objects such as the whiteboard or the class register.

There were some technical issues. For example, the teacher placed the template on a server, and students were instructed to open the file and save a copy into their own folders. However, when all students simultaneously tried to access the same file this caused severe network delays. To address this during the session, the teacher tried to save a copy into each student's folder herself using her own laptop.

Students generally found the software easy to use. One student, when asked whether using the software was a good way to tell a story, said, 'Yeah, because it's a comic strip!' but then said a story would be easier to understand if it was written down, 'because then you would be able to describe it more, and this is just pictures with a little bit of writing about what's happening,' adding that a written account could include more detail.

Another student said, 'I like when you click on anything, absolutely anything, you can change the style of it and I really love it for that.' The main complaint was that the text boxes were difficult to move around.

ComicLife for photo-story type activities

This software is available free on Macs and for a fee from Plasq

A page on ‘how to use ComicLife in the classroom’ is available from here.

Supporting reflection for learning through photo-stories

As a learning tool, photo-stories can be selected to create a narrative or snapshot of a concept, experiment, or similar to indicate a level of understanding, draw out results, major findings etc. The following is a suggested lesson outline that describes and introduces a comic-style photo-story and how it may be used in a secondary class activity. Supporting technology can include ComicLife – see later section.

Photo-story Précis Primer

What is Science?
• Science is a story that we tell each other about how the world we live in works.
• The story is based on what we have collectively seen or measured about the world.
• The story is not finished, we are constantly finding ways to improve the process of science and making new discoveries.
• When communicating science there are many different ways we can do this. What ways can you think of? (Television documentaries, books, radio programmes, You tube, new scientist magazine, talks, science festivals, doing and recording experiments…)

What are Comics / Photo-stories?
• Comics are a medium for telling a story that combines both words and pictures.
• Comics are “sequential art” - to read the story multiple panels are “read” in sequence.
• Much of their communication goes on “between” panels
◦ The reader’s brain automatically fills in what has happened in the gap.

What are Comics Good For?
• Comics can be used to quickly tell a story (they can be read more quickly than text on its own).
• Comics are often used when working out how best to tell a story since they are easy to edit
◦ You can quickly add or remove panels, or rearrange the order that panels are placed in.
◦ You can add narration if the panels miss important stages in the process being conveyed
◦ You may have seen “storyboards” for TV shows or films before they have been shot.
• Comics can be used to tell any story - including the truth and evidence base of science reporting by communicating science work or concepts to others, helping others understand what was done in an experiment to give them enough knowledge to repeat what was done reliably.

Today's workshop will focus on using sequential art to précis a story – that is, using a comic to simplify a story by stripping out some of the less important details. The session is split into two halves. The first half introduces the cartoon précis with a humorous example story, the second half develops the skills with the creation of a science based narrative.

[Example from Scott McCloud]

More photo story examples

Example 2

I) Show 5 minute footage of us doing experiment (or could use actual “Brainiacs” TV show)
II) provide students with 50-or so still photos from the footage
III) Provide students with a bubble-budget for speech bubbles, annotations, etc.
IV) Task is to create a photo-story that

1. Explains what was done so that it could be reproduced by someone else
2. Conveys the finding of the experiment
3. Discusses any general principles shown

Future:

After this primer, in the next session students could conduct experiments and record their work using a video camera/phone/etc. and would be in a good position to use the ComicLife software to create a photo-story to describe their work.

Example 3:

As for example 2, but instead the teacher demonstrates the experiment etc. and the media taken at the time is used for photo-story creation in ComicLife. This eliminates a quantity of student work in lesson. The photo-story is then created using ComicLife in the next ICT lab slot or as homework.