The integration of technology with creativity is pivotal to educational practice and pedagogy (Henriksen et al., 2021) as it allows for personal expression and unique experiences which further enhances meaning-making and generation of ideas for students (Loveless, Burton & Turvey, 2006). Over three, fifty-minute lessons, Year 4 students will integrate the emerging technologies of virtual reality, robotics, and multimedia to enhance their understanding of language features, text structure and perspective used in imaginative writing.
Curriculum Links
Following the Stage 2 English syllabus, this imaginative writing module allows students to work towards or meet outcome EN2-2A (NESA, 2012) as they plan, draft, and publish an imaginative text through the consecutive lessons. This enables students to apply and enhance their understanding of text structure and language features. Students are also required to creatively express their ideas by writing from an astronaut’s perspective which aids students in achieving outcomes EN2-10C and EN2-11D (NESA, 2012). Furthermore, the writing criteria given to students after the creation of their draft allows students to reflect on their sentence structure, grammatical features, punctuation, and vocabulary used which satisfies outcome EN2-9B (NESA, 2012). Students also work towards achieving outcome EN2-3A (NESA, 2012) as throughout the module, students use a range of software to construct, edit and publish an imaginative text with the integration of audio, visual and print elements. See Appendix 1 for outcome details.
Fostering Creativity
Through incorporating virtual reality into the lesson, creativity is enhanced as allows students to yield new knowledge from an incomparable environment (Southgate et al., 2019) that may have been difficult to explain or visualise otherwise (Maulana & Purnomo, 2021). Further, this increases the possibilities of new ideas to be created in students learning and allows them to further understand and consider perspectives and key details of setting more effectively (Dede, 2009).
Using robotics, like the Ozobot assists students to articulate their understanding (Sun, Chang & Chiang, 2022) whilst also promoting high levels of participation, motivation and engagement (Verner, Perez & Lavi, 2022). Specifically, the Ozobot provides an engaging and visual way of allowing Year 4 to understand the elements text structure which they can later apply when composing their writing. This fosters students’ creativity by giving them a unique way of representing their ideas.
After students have planned their story using the Ozobot, students compose a draft, edit and then publish the story using Book Creator. Book Creator is a form of multimedia as the technology allows students to add features including text, images and audio (Book Creator, 2011). Using multimedia, like Book Creator, enables Year 4 to foster their creativity as the various features encourage experimentation, enhancing the learning of key concepts whilst also further developing students’ digital literacy skills (Lindner, Barenthien & Köller, 2021). Furthermore, the technology starts from a blank canvas which allows for endless possibilities for students which can further spark creativity.
The module takes upon a constructionism approach as each lesson allows students to construct knowledge through being an active participant in their learning (Papert, 1980). By creating a hands-on and collaborative environment, students increase the skills of exploration, experimentation and collaboration which all aid in nurturing creativity, innovation and meaning-making abilities (Blum-Ross, Kumpulainen & Marsh, 2020). Further, this approach incorporates a more personalised approach to learning for students which facilitates an improvement in student productivity, achievement and attitudes toward content (Paterson, Jackson & Grieve, 2012). The activities implemented in the module all contribute to developing these components as students actively create and shape their own writing whilst developing the skills, structure and language of imaginative writing.
Assessment
The assessment of the effectiveness of the imaginative writing module and student learning of achieving outcomes can be measured through both formative and summative assessing. Formative assessment of the module is examined through teacher feedback of student’s plan. Teachers should be assessing and providing feedback on students understanding of text structure and perspective. This assessment works towards outcomes EN2-2A, EN2-10C and EN2-11D (NESA, 2012). Formative assessment is integral in improving student learning outcomes as feedback allows students to revise, reflect and refine their work to enhance their understanding of the features of key concepts (Weurlander et al., 2012). Summative assessment of the module is by the completion of students published, imaginative writing piece, this can be assessed through a writing criterion, shown in Appendix 2. This is beneficial to illuminate areas of strength for students, as well as areas that need further instruction or learning (Ahmed, Ali & Shah, 2019). This assessment examines if students have achieved outcomes EN2-2A, EN2-3A, EN2-9B, EN2-10C and EN2-11D (NESA, 2012).