ICT teacher handbook/Audio visual communication

Note: The different themes have been organized as Levels 1, 2 and 3 based on the complexity of the ICT skills involved and also keeping in mind the syllabus and textbook levels of classes 6,7 and 8 respectively. For audio visual communication, given the complexity of the skills involved, the textbook intends to introduce it only in the second year of the ICT program and hence the starting level is indicated as level 2.

Chapter Objectives

1. Understanding the power of audio visual communication
2. Understanding how to tell a story – a story board and determining how/ when to introduce different elements – audio and video along with text
3. Creating digital compositions (audio and video)
4. Creating an audio book, by combining audio and text
5. Creating a video communication, an audio-visual book, by combining audio, images and text
6. Understanding the pedagogic possibilities in digital story telling
7. Helping student develop a critical perspective on communication for community

Digital learning resources

1. Computer lab with projection equipment
2. Camera, mobile, connectors
3. Audio and video recorders
4. Images, photos
5. Handout for Ubuntu
6. Handout for LibreOffice Writer
7. Handout for Image Viewer
8. Handout for ScreenShot
9. Handout for RecordMyDesktop

Additional Resources

1. The effectiveness of digital storytelling in the classrooms: a comprehensive study

Level 2 --> 6 weeks

This introductory level of audio visual communication requires six weeks of 3 periods each. 1 period is for teacher demonstration and discussion; two periods for hands-on work by students. A suggested break-up of activity-wise periods is given below. This is indicative, the teacher is encouraged to adjust the periods between activities and also between demonstration and hands on activity as needed.

Title	Reading	No of weeks (3 periods each)	Teacher demonstration periods	Student activity periods
About audio visual communication	Reading included
Audio story telling		3	3	6
Combining words and sounds to tell a story		3	3	6

Audio story telling

1. The objective of this activity is to appreciate the importance of audio as an important aspect of communication and how we can listen to sounds and tell a story. While doing this activity, students will also get an idea of the importance of oral history, how narration and oral traditions have helped in creating knowledge.
2. This activity will have two parts - listening to sounds and telling a story as well as listening to stories and narrations for understanding.
3. The teacher can use this activity to talk about how we are surrounded by sounds all the time, how we make meaning and how lot of information is contained in the different sounds around us - for example, when water is getting filled in a vessel how much is filled can be guessed based on the sound of the water dripping. In addition, also talk to students about oral traditions and how knowledge is handed down through generations.
4. Introduce to students the different ways of recording sounds - using a mobile, a voice recorder or a computer. For more information on how to access audio from different sources and adding to the computer click here.
5. In the teacher activity, some sample recordings for audio listening and a story telling have been given. The teacher is encouraged to record sounds that are present in their local environment and use it for the demonstration activities. You can also include local stories / story telling narrations for listening.
6. As part of the student activities ask them to do the following:
   1. Make a recording of all the sounds for a given situation or story - for example, lunch time at the school, sports period, cooking sounds in the kitchen, sounds of the local festival. They can also record sound clips for image essays already created. Let these be discrete, short duration clips than a long audio. For example, students coming out for lunch can be one clip, the sound of lunch vessels can be one, the sound of plates, the sounds of water for hand washing and the sounds of free play time can be different clips.
   2. Have the students record a story or a description from an elder in the family or community
7. The recordings made by the students can be shared for collective listening. Students can add illustrations to the sounds and narrations they are listening to and digitize them (hand drawn and digitized).
8. Wherever possible, the student work can be cumulated from the previous activities under communication with graphics.

Combining words and sounds to tell a story

This activity focuses on combining sounds to with spoken words to create stories. as a demonstration, the teacher can record a story or a narration with additional sounds/ music and present it. The story can be recorded without the sounds and with the sounds. This will introduce students to the skill of combining audio clips for a communication as well as help them appreciate how words and sounds complement a communication. You may even find it interesting to record some sounds very specific to a language and play it for the students and ask them to talk about what imagery the sounds evoke in their minds. This is especially useful for Indian languages.

The internet can be a good source of audio and video clips. You can also record your own clips.

In this activity for combining words and sounds, you can use the same story of "The Town Mouse and Country Mouse" and do a retelling of the story as a summary. You can do a short recording of the summary without any sounds and you can do a recording adding the sound clips of mouse squeaking and cats meowing to add to the effect of the story. Combine all these sounds using Audacity.

As part of the students' activities, have them add narrations to the sounds they have already recorded.

For more ideas on using picture stories for digital story telling click here.

Level 3 -> 6 weeks

This level of audio visual communication requires eight weeks of 3 periods each. 1 period is for teacher demonstration and discussion; two periods for hands-on work by students. A suggested break-up of activity-wise periods is given below. This is indicative, the teacher is encouraged to adjust the periods between activities and also between demonstration and hands on activity as needed.

Title	Reading	No of weeks (3 periods each)	Teacher demonstration periods	Student activity periods
About audio visual communication	Reading included
Making an audio book		2	2	4
Making an audio visual read aloud book		4	4	8

Make an audio book

This is a read-aloud of a book or any textual material. The primary objective is for students to get familiar with a method of creating resources which can supplement textual materials. This can also be an effective method of assessing students' speaking skills (pronunciation, fluency) - either as self evaluation exercises for the students or through peer assessments or teacher led assessments.

The teacher should demonstrate the audio read-aloud using a sample text. The excerpt from Lincoln's letter to his son's school teacher has been given here as an example. The audio file has been linked in the textbook. Encourage the students to discuss if there was any difference between their reading of the text and the audio listening.

The reading aloud can be added to a cumulative portfolio, building upon the following activities completed earlier:

1. Read aloud of the illustrated story they made in communications with graphics
2. Read aloud of the illustrated song they made in communications with graphics

For more ideas on using picture stories for digital story telling click here.

Make a read aloud audio visual book

This activity is an extension of the audio book; the illustrated and textual book is presented along with an audio narration. By doing this activity students can see how the different formats of information - text, images, audio and video - can come together to create. In this activity, a simple video creation tool is introduced, which records an application (a slide show of images, a text document with multiple pages or a poster) running on the computer screen and allows you to add audio. Such an application which records an application on the computer is called a screencast recorder. In this book, we have introduced an application called Record my Desktop which will allow you to create such an audio visual resource.

This is a cumulative activity and students can make the audio visual book using one or all of the following:

1. Adding voice narration to a photo and image essay
2. Reading aloud the illustrated songs and stories
3. Adding a narration to the poster made
4. Reading aloud the comic strip made
5. The audio clips recorded in the first activity can also be combined, for making videos, if applicable.