Digital Fieldtrips: Urban and Rural Communities
The goal of this learning activity is to engage students and teachers in hands-on
activities before, during and after a field trip in order to heighten their learning with
the use of both primary and secondary sources. The use of voice recorders allows
for the capture of first-hand testimony from 'experts' in the field, such as local
citizens of the urban and rural communities we visit. The use of digital cameras
allows for the capture of images of the communities. The final product for students
will be a slide show of their audiovisual documentation, a ‘Guided Tour’ saved on
CD. Students will upload the digital data, sequence it in slide show software, edit and
revise the slide show with added text and features to complete a documentary of
their research findings. The student groups will share their slide shows with other
members of the school community.
Student Learning
Based on the planning by the classroom teachers and Teacher-Librarian and the
students are involved in a 3-4 week process for the Digital Field Trip.
Initially, the classroom teacher leads the students through Stage 1 of the Inquiry
process. They develop questions for the field trip, based on their in-class learning
about Urban and Rural Communities. Next are the technology skills lessons, to teach
the correct use of the digital voice recorder and the effective use of a digital camera
for this task. Following this, the students and teachers take the time to practise the
use of the technology and to rehearse oral recordings. The students are expected to
accurately pronounce and use the related vocabulary. A lesson on storyboarding, as
a tool for documentation of the audio and visual components, should be conducted.
On the storyboard will be documented the audio recording times and sketches of the
corresponding image. This will be the basis of the sequence for the slideshow, to
coordinate the audio and visual raw footage. These three elements will be the
responsibility of a trio group during the field trip, for use during interviews and the
bus and walking trip. With this preparation the students are ready for Stage 2,
Access Resources.
Digital production
The students learn to upload their image and audio files onto the computer. By
organizing the files in one folder, they systematically view and listen to each file,
deleting those that were considered not useful and renaming files that they selected
to save.
During lab sessions learn to use Audacity, an audio editing software. The students
learn to clip unwanted audio sections in their file and how to record new audio files.
They also learn how to upload their image and audio files to Movie Maker, the video
creation software. At this point they use teamwork to sequence their images and
audio files into a field trip recount or persuasive documentary. This post-production
work takes many days that require great perseverance on behalf of the students!
The students write scripts for new audio recordings to complement the voice
recordings of on-site interviews. Their greatest challenge is to organize the separate
pieces of information into one voice for the documentation of their learning. As they
complete the sequence and digital videos, they each come to new understandings
about the different communities that they visited. Their final products communicate
their newfound understandings.