ICT teacher handbook/Communicating with graphics

Chapter Objectives

1. Understanding the power of story telling as communication, using textual, visual and audio visual methods
2. Understanding how to tell a story – developing a story board and determining how/ when to introduce different elements – text, images, designs
3. Creating digital art and simple animations as a method of expression
4. Creating a graphic communication - combining images and text
5. Understanding the pedagogic possibilities in digital story telling
6. Helping students develop a critical perspective on communication for community

Digital learning resources

1. Computer lab with projection equipment
2. Camera, mobile, connectors
3. Images, photos
4. Handout for Ubuntu
5. Handout for LibreOffice Writer
6. Handout for Freeplane
7. Handout for Tux Paint
8. Handout for Image Viewer

Additional Resources

1. Storytelling - how to tell a story
2. How to make an animation
3. The effectiveness of digital storytelling in the classrooms: a comprehensive study

Transaction notes for activities

Each activity has the following components - time estimate, prior preparation, methodology, discussion questions, subject integration and portfolio. Each theme of the textbook and the associated activities have been designed keeping in mind the possibilities for peer learning. Not all students will work with all data files; so the teacher should allow for an organized sharing/ presentation time for students to learn from each others' work. This can be done at the end of each activity or at the end of each level. This is left to the teacher to decide. Students can also be encouraged to help one another, to create a collaborative and supportive learning environment.

Level 1 -> 6 weeks

The first level 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 communication with graphics	Reading included
Photo and image essays		3	3	6
Telling a story from pictures		3	3	6

Photo and Image essays

1. This activity requires three 3-period blocks: 1 period for demonstration and 2 periods for the hands-on work.
2. Keep ready pictures/ images/ slide shows for demonstrating how to tell a story. Alternatively prepare the students in advance for them to collect images.
3. In addition to images in the activity, use the computer timeline slide show, picture gallery of microscope and the time line of communication technology to talk about how pictures, combinations of pictures and text can be used to communicate. Important areas to focus can be on (i) what is / are the key idea(s), (ii) how to structure it, (iii) determining when is text useful, (iv) evaluation of the method of graphic communication.
4. You could also discuss with students how each person creating a communication with images can collect different images to show depending on what they want to emphasize on. The other side of this is that pictures can give rise to multiple stories - open ended and closed ended - and multiple narratives, depending on the context of the story teller. As a teacher, picture and image essays can be an important way of understanding students' perspectives through this communication.
5. Focus on how to capture a good picture - the working of the camera, the effect of light on the picture quality, what is the object to be focused, when to zoom and when to capture a wide area etc are to be discussed with the students. Introduce students to file sizes of images and explain to them the connection between resolution and file sizes (higher resolution of images leads to higher file sizes).
6. In the teacher-led activity, there is a single image and two sets of multiple images. The story teller (the teacher) can we use a single image or when can we use multiple images are all decisions to make story telling effective.
   1. Single image essay: This is an image that can be used to speak about cows, milk, the relationship between cow, calf and human beings. Sometimes a single image is very powerful when we want to talk about an idea. If we are wanting to speak about processes of milk production and occupation, multiple images could be more effective.
   2. Multiple image essay: If we want to profile the timeline of a place or event, multiple images are effective. Another example is when we want to capture important moments in a festival, school function or even emotions of children in a game, multiple images can be better.
      • Emphasise that there need not be a rule about single/ multiple images - students should be able to tailor and develop a communication based on the idea they want to communicate and the audience they want to communicate with.
7. For each one of the activities, let the students work in small groups and identify the pictures they want to collect/ create. In this activity, they will either create the images using paper and pen and digitize or take photographs of events that they are creating a picture essay on. There is possibility for both for individual image essays and collective digital essays.
8. The image collection can be done outside of the classroom hours, the class period will be used for presenting the images and discussion.
9. Any image that is used can reflect a subject area. In addition to demonstrating the students' grasp of the subject, the teacher can also use this discussion to build learning skills needed. These can be the rubrics for assessment also.

Tell a story

1. This activity requires three 3-period blocks: 1 period for demonstration and 2 periods for the hands-on work.
2. Students must add narratives to the image and picture essays they have created. You can also give them additional images or photographs to compose stories.
3. The focus here is on understanding how stories can be different - fictional, biographic, descriptive, narrative, open ended or closed ended. The focus is on coherence on story telling than the language competencies demonstrated.
4. Ability to develop a story line in different contexts and making connections to build multiple narratives is an important learning outcome.
5. Since this is a novel experience for students, encourage them to be creative and productive. It is not so important to be correct factually or in language, that can develop over time. Since using images for communication gives students an option to using written text for communication, it is likely that students who are not usually very good with written text may excel here. You can use the diverse ways of presenting information, creative expression, to encourage the diverse skills of different students. This is part of the 'comprehensive' in CCE.

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

Level 2 -> 8 weeks

The second level requires eight weeks of 3 periods.

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 communication with graphics	Reading included
Stories and songs come alive with pictures		4	4	8
Creating animated pictures		4	4	8

Stories and songs come alive with pictures

1. The teacher has the choice of doing the illustrations by hand and digitizing or using a digital art creation tool; this could even be a group activity. Some students can illustrate songs, some can illustrate stories.
2. It will be useful for students to make a concept map of ideas being communicated in the song/ story and abstract the important story line items for illustrating. The teacher can facilitate this discussion, encouraging students to express their understanding using multilingual expressions.
3. Here again, focus on the choice of ideas for illustration. You can use this exercise to help stimulate creativity in children. As different children will have different ways of imagining representing songs and stories by pictures, encourage students to present in the class and share their thinking in detail. This sharing will support peer learning and students who are quite visibly creative, will be able so rub off on other students also.
4. The illustrations can be hand drawn and digitized. The students can also be encouraged to create using digital art tools like Tux Paint.
5. For this activity, the teacher must demonstrate the following (all the pictures and text document are given in the textbook activity):
   1. Drawing a picture and coloring a picture using TuxPaint
   2. Opening a digitized hand drawn picture and making changes
   3. Inserting images and showing as a slide show
   4. Combining the text from the story/ song with pictures using a text editor
   5. The story town mouse and country mouse can be taken up for illustration. The internet can be a good source of images. You can also create your images. Some good quality illustrations for this story are available here.
6. Emphasize that this activity is cumulative and this will be built upon using audio visual tools.
7. The activity should also include presentation of each others' picture stories - only as picture albums or using text and pictures.
8. The school can also consider having some of these creative presentations being shared on the School's annual day or other events. It is also possible to include student presentations, connecting image with audio/visual stories in parent meetings in schools, since text illiterate parents will also be able to enjoy these presentations and get a feel of the learning processes in the schools. Parents (and community members) are also likely to enjoy their local songs and stories being available as picture stories and pictures with songs and this also may help them connect better with the school learning processes.

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

Creating animated stories

1. This activity requires 4 sets of 3 periods.
2. An animation is a set of rapidly changing images, creating an illusion of movement. Deciding how to make minor changes and illustrate is an expression of students' creativity.
3. In the teacher led activity, you can demonstrate how an animation works using a set of images, opened in a tool called Tux Paint.
4. This is an extension of creating an illustrated story, using the animation feature of a digital art creation tool like Tux Paint.
5. An animation can be of the stories and songs chosen earlier for illustration or an independent slide show.
6. During this activity demonstrate the following:
   1. Making a series of images with incremental changes
   2. Using the slide show option to show as an animation within Tux Paint

Level 3 -> 6 weeks

The third level requires six weeks of 3 periods.

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 communication with graphics	Reading included
Making comic strips		4	4	8
Making posters		4	4	8

Comic Strips

1. The objective here is to help students create an independent story line or idea as a comic strip
2. Help students identify appropriate sequences - 3-5 pictures
3. Helping them think about how to create conversations (this can be an useful method to help students with discourse creation)
4. Illustrating with a digital art application
5. We will use LibreOffice Writer to put together images and conversations

Making posters

1. This can be in the nature of a cumulative project bringing together their experiences of working with text and images.
2. This can be done as individual projects of group projects.
3. The choice of topic can be based on concepts being explored in school, stories or poems being discussed in the language classes or contemporary issues of local significance.
4. The students should be able to build critical perspectives and narratives on social processes and events, being able to see the issues, argue out multiple perspectives (using comic strips) or make an infographic. Digital image creations are to be encouraged.
5. As in the earlier case, the school can consider showcasing these as part of an annual day exhibition or competition.

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