4.+Reflections

Creating this movie was an engaging, collaborative endeavour -- an example of knowledge building in action. Although neither one of us had a predetermined notion of what we would present in the movie, through a process of negotiation and building on each other's ideas we came to consensus. As we reflected on the course content, as well as all that we have learned over the past year in our graduate studies of technology, and our past work with students, we found that much of what we needed for our movie had already been created. Developing this movie was a rewarding process that allowed us to portray the story of our work with children and digital technologies and to see the many ways in which we have truly embraced those technologies. The stories of our work with children have become vehicles to teach others about the potential of digital technologies when used in inquiry based classrooms.

The practical side of putting together a digital artifact presented many opportunities for learning new or improved tools, and challenges to achieving our ultimate goal. The process, in and of itself, ensured that we will empathize with those learners who express frustration, exasperation, and finally sheer joy, when planned elements do or don't come together in reality. We also experienced practical technological issues, such as having different versions of needed software; editing the same digital object from two different places; negotiating which elements to cut, shorten, or add; and coming to a meeting of the minds regarding choices of images and music to support our message! Such decisions engaged us in thoughtful and intellectually stimulating conversations around those elements that expressed our philosophical outlook as well as how we interpreted our chosen descriptors: eventually we agreed that each of these descriptors, for the most part, contained elements of others, and so samples finally chosen often exemplified several, if not all.

We are pleased that our digital product contains glimpses of both online and offline activities--earlier referred to as //hybrid worlds//--in order to encourage and exemplify inquiry in constructivist-designed learning environments in //both worlds// as well as to inspire our learners toward further explorations into the digital world!

//Click on image to see more of FrodoBabb's Digital Creations!//