WHAT WOULD YOU SAY A DIGITAL WORLD IS???
In the world today majority of people are born into technology and it is easily accessible at their fingertips via mobile phones, laptops, tablets, computers, maps etc. Existing in the 21st Century, realistically, we are living in a world where majority of people rely on being connected in order to work, meet friends, bank, shop and even phone and stay in contact with people overseas. According to (RTENewsNow, 2014).
“We are provided with more possibilities to create and communicate on a global scale”. With the world being so accessible, we have learnt that children are now born as Digital Natives. That is they are born with life long use of technology (Howell, 2012, p. 57), and as educators we must be able to meet their digital needs and provide them with opportunities to grow on their digital skills.
These children, who are born rich in technology, prefer the use of graphics rather than text (Howell, 2012, p.8) when it comes to learning and they can often become bored in the classroom, especially if they are partaking in additional and engaging learning activities provided to them outside of the scho
ol environment (Howell, 2012, p. 13). A great way to maintain students’ attention and increase participation is to cut back on lecturing by using more group or student collaboration activities and designing programs that are inclusive of choice, customization, transparency, integrity, collaboration, fun, speed and innovation (Howell, 2012, p. 13). As educators we should be able to obtain students’ full potential by learning and mastering the technology that our students are required to use in the classroom. This can also double as learning curve for ourselves and take it as an opportunity to get to know each individual child as you teach them the technology.
TRANSMEDIA IN THE CLASSROOM
So what would you say transmedia is??? I had never actually heard the term Transmedia before, but I now understand that it is a set of narrative and non-narrative elements of a story that is told and portrayed across multiple platforms. They can be mobile applications, video games, movies, print etc (Alpha and Herr-Stephenson, 2013, p. 366). For example a sketch of a character turns into a comic book, then a tv series, into a movie and then a toy is made etc. Transmedia history extends back to the bible, the most successful transmedia narrative in history. It has not adapted but extended, elaborated and transformed the stories, making them more visual, audible and appealing to the audience (Johnson n.d.).
Transmedia experiences invite children to develop digital, textual and visual media literacy skills, social skills and cultural competencies(Alpha , 2013, p. 367). But on the other hand it relies on students to be able to decode, remix, create and circulate many different kinds of media (Alpha , 2013, p. 366). As educators we can use transmedia to encourages our students’ to use their critical and active inquiry based 
learning skills, by teaching them that; all types of media is created for a specific purpose; show them how to understand how these types of media are spread across different networks; and encourage them to explore the different types of technology surrounding them. (Alpha , 2013, p. 367).
As educators we can easily set a group task of writing a story together, but why does it have to stop there? It doesn’t. We can continue to cultivate their creativity and set follow up task getting students to write up a script for their story, make a movie from their script, and create a fan page from the movie. As you can see there are many opportunities and avenues for students to take a simple idea and expand on it.
A DIGITALLY FLUENT CLASSROOM
Digital Fluency is the development of skills needed to partake in the digital age. We know that children start off as technology neophytes, or beginners (Howell, 2012, p. 139) and it takes a lot of practice and a vast skilel set to become digitally fluent. In the early years of schooling students should be focusing on developing a strong set of basic skills that will grow throughout their years in school, experiment with alternative tools assisting in creativity, experimental and purposeful play as well as build on their literacy and numeracy skills (Howell, 2012, p. 131). If we look at a student in year 4, with 4 years of schooling behind them, students, including students who had little experience with technology, should now have a similar set of skills behind them and should hopefully all be able to successfully complete a number of basic tasks on a range of digital devices (Howell, 2012, p. 133). 
The Microsoft Office tool is an important piece of technology as it assists with children’s literacy and creativity skills. It can be the basis for many different assignments and tasks from writing a story, to creating table, graphs and posters, to connecting with other students and making presentations (Howell, 2012).
It is important for us as educators to incorporate and work towards mastering these skills as it can have impact on each student’s ability to cope with and work in the next years of school along with forming the basic skills for post-formal schooling (Howell, 2012, p. 139-140). As educators we need to aim to create a positive attitude towards technology in the early years and by using a wide variety of digital technologies, us educators can accomplish this.
1st DIGITAL TEACHING RESOURCE
The first of my digital resources is on http://www.studyblue.com. It is an online flash card creator which students can review, be quizzed on and study. I have created flash cards which have the English word on one side, and on the other side is the Italian word in writing, audio and phonetically.
2nd DIGITAL TEACHING RESOURCE
My second digital resource is on http://www.pintrest.com. It is an online tool website where you can view millions of other peoples interests and and “pin” them to your board. I have created a board for teaching social skills, with a variety of activities, posters, movies and information for teachers.
EVALUATION MATRIX #1
 Name of teaching resource
Flash Cards |
| Weblink (if web based) |
| Who should this digital teaching resource be used with? (ie year/grade)
Year two |
| How should it be used? (e.g. individual, whole class)
Individual and Group Learning |
| Which subject or learning area would it be most appropriate to use in?
Italian |
| Identify the strengths of this teaching resource
– There are a number of different quiz’ for students to take. It offers you the choice to study the answers – You are able to group the flash cards into different sub-areas. For example I have a folder “Italian” and – Students are able to print out these flashcards and take them home to study. – It is available for the whole class to use – It provides the option to add audio to the cards, so students can practice their language as well as use |
| Identify any weaknesses of this teaching resource
– If students are creating their own flash cards, teachers will have to make sure that they are correct – You are unable to quiz all sub-folders at once. |
| Explain any ideas you may have for further use of this teaching resource
You are able to set this as a task for your students to do themselves or in a group, creating their own flash cards on a subject they are studying. They can make and study their own and others in their class’ flash cards. Doubling up as an activity and a study tool. |
EVALUATION MATRIX #2 Name of teaching resourceSocial Skills |
| Weblink (if web based) |
| Who should this digital teaching resource be used with? (ie year/grade)
Year Three |
| How should it be used? (e.g. individual, whole class)
Both Individually and as a group |
| Which subject or learning area would it be most appropriate to use in?
Language, Social-Emotional |
Identify the strengths of this teaching resource
|
Identify any weaknesses of this teaching resource
|
| Explain any ideas you may have for further use of this teaching resource
This website has information and resources of a range of different subjects and ideas for creating things, so it is a great tool for educators to use REFERENCES Alpha, M. & Herr-Stephenson, R. (2013). Transmedia Play: Literacy Across Media. Journal of Media Literacy Education, 5:2 (2013) 366-369. Retrieved from Curtin University database. Howell, J. (2012). Teaching with ITC: Digital Pedagogies for Collaboration and Creativity. Victoria: Oxford University Press Johnson, D. (n.d). A History of Transmedia Entertainment. Retrieved from RTENewsNow (2014, February 21). Growing up in a Digital World. a news2day special. [Video file]. Retrieved Digital Technology [Image] (n.d). Retrieved from http://113.192.21.100/~resourcesolut/blog/wp-contet/uploads/2015/05/Digital-Technology.jpg Digital World [Image] (n.d). Retrieved from https://media.licdn.com/mpr/mpr/p/6/005/05b/288/2a045d9.jpg Filehippo [Image] (n.d). Retrieved from http://news.filehippo.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/sahleducom-e1374057380431.jpg Petreadrew [Image] (n.d). Retrieved from https://petreadrew.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/scratch-image.png Transmedia in Education [Image] (n.d). Retrieved from http://www.edu-sources.org/transmedia-in-education-tie-the-world-through-storytelling-and-take-action/ Transmedia Logo [Image] (n.d) Retrieved from http://cinema.usc.edu/userfiles/A0127948311B99D1C02CF7783648D35EBD92E9B2images/TransmediaLogo.jpg Transmedia StoryWorld [Image] (n.d). Retrieved from http://www.dohafilminstitute.com/content/workshops/image/70/normal_flyer_copy.jpg |
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