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The Stella Maris, a futuristic airship, is eerily silent. All ten of the crew have been struck down with a mysterious illness, and it’s up to one 15 year-old schoolgirl to solve the mystery and steer the ship safely to the nearest island. But before she can do that, she’ll need to create her own avatar, and equip it with clothes, tools and even a hair style.

Steamfish is a cutting-edge virtual reality game developed by Y Productions that helps students to learn about the science and ethics of clinical trials. It aims to engage young learners by presenting them with a video game experience that they can help to create themselves, explains Eleanor Lang, General Manager of Y Touring, part of YMCA Central, which has commissioned the game.

The game is a modern re-telling of how early scientists discovered and treated scurvy in sailors. Putting students into a virtual world and allowing them to create game content themselves makes a complex issue much more immediate, says Lang. “We originally commissioned a play exploring these issues, but having children actively involved in a quest extends and deepens their understanding enormously, and also taps into the things they’re naturally interested in outside the classroom,” she says.

Research suggests that such projects are still relatively few and far between. The National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) recently conducted a nationwide survey into how schools and colleges use digital technology and social media in the classroom. “What we found was that far too many technologies are just being used for presentational purposes, while relatively few young people are being given the opportunity to actively author, edit and publish digital content,” says Matthew Walker, a researcher with NFER and author of the report. “However, early adopters have found that involving children in the creation and control of content offers enormous learning opportunities and can also engage children who might be put off by the traditional forms of education.”

“RELATIVELY FEW YOUNG PEOPLE ARE BEING GIVEN THE OPPORTUNITY TO ACTIVELY AUTHOR, EDIT AND PUBLISH DIGITAL CONTENT”

That’s certainly the experience of Cape UK, a consulting group that works with local education authorities to support creativity and development in schools. One of the organisation’s recent projects was Film FX, where secondary school children were given mobile phones and helped to make short films about subjects close to their heart. “There are thousands of children who simply aren’t excited by mainstream education, but you put a mobile phone in their hands and ask them to make a film and they’re learning maths by working out aspect ratios, timings, image resolution and scale ratios for animation – it’s amazing,” says Jo Garnham, Operations Director with Cape UK.

And the project is within the reach of schools, financially speaking – Garnham says that handsets cost just £99 each, and films were edited on a regular Mac computer. “All together, you could do this in a school today for less than £1,000,” she says. “I think the act of using something they’re interested in outside the classroom is often more important than it being the latest, greatest handset.”

The challenge for educators, of course, is how to ensure that any such investment in digital technology (which isn’t insignificant for a school) is applied constructively in the classroom. On the one hand, technology should be used in a way that students find engaging and relevant. But the content must also be linked into the curriculum, and have specific learning outcomes. The key is to approach technology creatively, and consider how technology can shape the curriculum, rather than just using technology to do the things that you would have done anyway. In a recent literature review on digital literacy and participation, Futurelab urged educators to consider how technology could be embedded within the curriculum to enhance learning and to ensure that children acquire the skills, knowledge and understanding to participate fully and safely in the digital landscape.

NFER advises educators to carefully consider three questions before embarking on any digital content project. First, what technology will you use and how will that technology shape what you teach? Second, what are the specific learning outcomes and goals of the project? Finally, are staff and students fully committed to the project, and will there be time and resources to support people using the technology?

There is a wide range of options depending on the answers to those questions, says Walker. For example, blogs are a perfect technology for creative writing and literacy, and enabling peer review, while wikis are an excellent way of learning about collaboration. Students can use podcasts to provide personalised revision aids or to record exemplar readings from language classes, or they might use video and film to explore topics in depth.

“THERE ARE RISKS AND RESPONSIBILITIES THAT COME WITH CREATING AND CONTROLLING CONTENT”

The key is to fully plan how you will exploit whatever technology you use, to ensure that children gain not only curriculum-based knowledge but also digital literacy. “Technology is all about enabling communication between people, so you might have classes, school years or even different schools collaborating on content, with feedback and peer evaluation,” says Dan Moorhouse, Head of Humanities Learning at Park Lane High School in Halifax. “That’s great but it’s important to balance that with the idea that there are risks and responsibilities that come with creating and controlling content.” However, it’s important to ensure that children themselves are supported to think critically about these risks and responsibilities as, after all, that’s a significant facet of what it means to be digitally literate.

Students at Park Lane High School regularly create films and podcasts which Moorhouse uploads to the school intranet for peer review, and to the YouTube website. “In a subject like history, letting students create their own digital content is a great way of bringing the subject to life, especially for teenage boys,” says Moorhouse. “We often present them with lots of materials and ask them to select sources, sequence them and create mini movies or build websites that incorporate interviews and interactive timelines, which we then publish online, either internally on the intranet or on a teacher-administered YouTube account,” he says.

Examples such as this are hotly debated at Learning Today, a Special Interest Group (SIG) where teachers discuss ways to use digital technology innovatively to improve engagement in the classroom, and, most importantly, to enhance learning and drive critical digital literacy. “As a teacher, you want to improve engagement, but it’s also important that students acquire the skills they need to approach media and technology critically, to think about where information comes from, how technology can share but also conceal information and that you shouldn’t necessarily take everything you see at face value,” says Angela Colvert, a Senior Lecturer at Roehampton University and a member of the Learning Today SIG.

Colvert recently ran a highly successful digital learning project with Year 6 pupils based on an alternative reality game (ARG). This is an online game that relies on existing communication technologies – mobile phones, message boards and webcams – rather than a software application.

“YOU CAN’T JUST STICK THE CHILDREN IN FRONT OF A COMPUTER AND EXPECT THEM TO DEVELOP THESE SKILLS”

The project was based on the novel Krindlekrax, in which a mysterious crocodile sneaks into a school through a network of underground sewers. The Year 6 pupils were asked to bring the story to life as an ARG, which would be played by Year 5 pupils the following term.

The children brainstormed ideas and decided to start with a community website for the residents of Lizard Street, where the novel is set. They then developed websites for specific characters, where they could write in character. The next step for the children was to imagine what happens when something newsworthy takes place, so they started by writing online newspaper articles, and then looked at creating message boards, where the ‘authorities’ would be able to share information with the community. They even filmed some ‘mysterious’ webcam footage showing the creature hiding in the shadows.

The game started when the Year 5 students received an email asking for help with the mystery. It lasted for two weeks, during which time the Year 6 students published their content and wrote online in character on emails, websites and message boards.

The project was primarily focused around creative writing but the children also learned about history, biology and geography, to make their story more realistic. “More than anything, they learned a lot about digital literacy and critical engagement,” says Colvert. “They really thought about things like how message boards are different to instant messaging, because on a message board you have more time to think and can present longer arguments. We also talked about how on a webcam, it’s more immediate, but they had to choose their words carefully and think about body language. I think that was probably one of the most important things they’ve learned.”

Early adopters of digital media in the classroom agree that the key to success is using technology in a way that adds meaning to the curriculum. “You can’t just stick the children in front of a computer and expect them to develop these skills,” says Colvert. “It was really important for them to use the technology to actively engage with the material, because that’s when they start to really think about what that technology means, in terms of how information is shared, and sometimes hidden.”

If done well, allowing students to create their own digital content can help them to discover an enthusiasm for the curriculum that wouldn’t otherwise be there, adds Moorhouse. “History is one of those subjects that some students will always consider to be boring,” he says. “But if you start showing them how to access that knowledge through digital media, and how to share their work online, suddenly they’re keen to learn. It’s made an enormous difference.”

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