Media and the Curriculum

Assignment 1 requires you to present a 20-40 minute workshop presentation and discussion on the readings for the week that you have chosen. Your objective is to teach your fellow students about the key concepts, ideas, practices or issues raised in the readings using your workshop presentation. It is expected that you will present students with information about the readings and facilitate a discussion. You may also consider having a workshop activity. There is no set format for your presentation outside of these parameters. For example, you may choose to present for a short time and have a long discussion, or you may choose to present for a long time and have a short activity. Whatever format you choose, I encourage you to be informative, creative and engaging. You must submit any resources used such as handouts, slides, script, etc.

I encourage collaboration between students, especially internal and external students. Internal students may choose to collaborate with another internal or external student for this assignment, although this is at the discretion of your tutor. If internal and external students collaborate with each other, the internal student must present in the workshop. As both collaborating students receive the same mark, please organise your work to take account of this fact. Please organise partners before Week 1 if possible. Please use mediacurriculum.yolasite.com, our Facebook page, or this unit’s LMS page to make contact with and organise with other students.

I request that all or part of your presentation (eg. information hand outs, activity sheets, PowerPoint slides, etc.) is made available to our external students via Murdoch’s LMS and/or through this unit’s mediacurriculum.yolasite.com and Facebook. If you agree, I will upload these for you. If you use a slide presentation, such as PowerPoint, please take the time to add a voice recording to speak through your slides for our external students (eg. go to Slide Show, and Voice Narration). This is not compulsory and you will NOT be penalised if you do not add a voice recording. You may choose to use another presentation slide program, such as prezi.com, however you’ll have to record a voice to this using another program. These can be viewed on the internet (prezi.com) for students to access. Please refer to the Assignment 1 Coversheet for assessment criteria.

Assignment 1 requires you to submit a presentation on the readings for the week that you have chosen. You are to present in the form of a slide presentation of 10-20 minutes (eg. PowerPoint, Keynote) with an audio voice-recording. Your objective is to teach your fellow students about the key concepts, ideas, practices or issues raised in the readings using your workshop presentation. I encourage you to be informative, creative and engaging.

I encourage collaboration between students, especially internal and external students. External students may choose to collaborate with another external or internal student for this assignment. If internal and external students collaborate with each other, the internal student must present in the workshop. As both collaborating students receive the same mark, please organise your work to take account of this fact. Please use mediacurriculum.yolasite.com, our Facebook page, or this unit’s LMS page to make contact with and organise with other students.

I request that all or part of your presentation is made available to other students via Murdoch’s LMS or through this unit’s mediacurriculum.yolasite.com and Facebook. If you agree, I will upload these for you. You may choose to use another presentation slide program, such as prezi.com so long as you can add a voice recording to it. Please refer to the Assignment 1 Coversheet for assessment criteria. All students should email their Assignment 1 presentations to me.

Over the course of the semester you will create a website using a free website creation website (eg. Weebly or Yola). Your website will be a resource for teaching a term-long media program of work. Your website will be used by students of one of your future lower-school (Years 7-10) Media classes. You will brainstorm possible topics and begin to plan your program over the first few weeks of the unit.

Your website should contain information on a term-long (8-10 weeks, 2 one hour periods a week) teaching/learning program/unit of work for a class. Your future students must be able to use your website as a guide and resource in order to complete the program of work you set for them. Therefore, your website should contain such things as: general information about the program of work; a page that describes the links between the program of work and the curriculum; a week by week (or lesson by lesson) break-down of the unit of work; activities, web links and worksheets; and information on their assessment. You may, for example, create a website that has a welcome/homepage, a page outlining objectives and curriculum links, a page outlining the assessment, and a page for each week of your program, which may include worksheets, and other resources. Feel free to add more functions to your website, such as blogs, etc. Please see the mediacurriculum.yolasite.com as an example.

You do not need to have finished your website by the time of submitting Assignment 2, however, you need to have made some progress (see the assignment coversheet) and published it to the web with a website address. As well, you need to have created:

1.     A homepage;

2.     A page/s describing the learning program, its objectives and its links to the curriculum.

You will formally begin creating your website at Topic 3. There is a video link posted on this unit’s Murdoch LMS and at mediacurriculum.yolasite.com to assist you with this task. It is important that as you begin creating your website, that you reflect upon the process of creating it. Ask yourself: what challenges do I face? What is easy to do? What has helped me begin creating my website? What could assist me more? If I asked my students to do this task, how could I support them?

 
Assignment 2 requires that you share some of your reflections on the initial stages of the creation of your website in (up to 1000 words) written text. You are not required to provide a comprehensive review of the website, however, there are three key parts to this reflection:

·       describe the topic and objectives of your unit of work and describe how you have attempted to align these with some of the theory and/or research covered in weeks 1-5;

·       provide a personal account of how you began the task of creating your website and your reflections on this (eg. challenges, strengths, etc.);

·       describe how your reflections could assist you in understanding teaching and learning (eg. the factors that may enable or constrain student engagement in learning activities/tasks, etc.).

(Please refer to the Copyright video and Copyright information on the Murdoch website. You must not place into your website any copyrighted images, videos or text that you do not have copyright permission to use. Ensure that your images have been purchased, or belong to you, or are covered by a Creative Commons or open licence. A video has been posted on the above website to offer you guidance.)

 
Please refer to the Assignment 2 Coversheet for assessment criteria. All students should submit their assignments as electronic copies using the University’s Learning Management System (LMS).

You should continue building your website throughout the course of the semester. Your website should guide your future students through a unit of work, providing information and resources that will help them complete the unit. Your website must be published on the web by Topic 9.

You are required to submit the following:

1. Your website address.

Write your web address on the top of the Assignment 3 Coversheet. Ensure your website is published onto the web.

2. A 1000 word written reflection on your finished website.

This should include:

·       A description of and justification for your program of work, how your program progresses through the term, and the assessment/s you have chosen;

·       A reference page.

(You will not be penalised for going below or exceeding the word limit.)

3. Two detailed lesson plans related to two consecutive lessons from your unit of work.

Your lessons should be outlined on one page each (landscape), which should be divided into 4 columns. Assign the following to a column each:

1.     A description of the lesson’s learning objectives;

2.     A description of the lesson’s learning activities (in sequence), including your instructions, key questions, etc.;

3.     A list or description of the learning resources used, including texts;

4.     A description of the evaluations you will make of the lesson and/or your students’ learning, which may include formal assessments and descriptions of the behaviours and/or competencies to look out for in order to judge student learning and decide the direction of future lessons (or planning).

Ensure that you provide enough information so that your marker understands what is happening throughout the course of your lesson. Your lessons should demonstrate your understanding of the Media curriculum and the unit readings.

Your website will be reviewed and assessed by your tutor and a small group of your peers. Your peer mark will constitute 10% of your Assignment 3 mark. The Unit Coordinator reserves the right to moderate your peer mark – you will be advised if this has occurred.

Please review the sample lesson plans provided in your reader.

 

Assignment 4 requires that you (1) read the upper school WACE Media Production and Analysis course of study, (2) choose an upper school Media unit from the MPA course of study that you would like to teach, (3) create an overview of a 6-10 week media program (4 one-hour lessons per week), and (4) a write a rationale for your program.

To complete part 3 of this task, you could divide your pages (landscape) into 3 to 5 columns or rows: use one column or row for each week. Divide each column or row into sections that contain:

·       A description of the main objectives of the week;

·       A description of the main activities of the week;

·       A list and/or description of the texts and/or text types to be used in that week;

·       A description of any informal or formal assessments used that week.

Please review the sample Program Overview provided in your reader (Topic 3) and/or unit website. You should be attentive to such things as the overall objective of your program, the sequencing of your students’ learning, your assessment/s, and the range of learning experiences and texts you provide.

Your overview should be preceded by a short essay (between 500-1000 words) that provides a coherent rationale for your program, that is, an informed justification of the choices you made in the design of your program. You rationale should:

1.     describe the MPA unit you have chosen, your media program of work, and how your media program links to the MPA unit chosen;

2.     explains why your program (or such things as the topic, texts, teaching strategies, learning activities, assessment/s and sequence of learning experiences) can be regarded as pedagogically sound (eg. provide an educational justification for your program).

You do not have to provide an appendix of handouts. Simply ensure that you provide enough information on your activities so that your marker understands the key activities/learning experiences that are happening each week and how these are linked week-to-week.

The Media Production and Analysis course can be found at:

 
Please refer to the Assignment 4 Coversheet in this Unit Guide for assessment criteria. All students should submit their assignments as electronic copies using the University’s Learning Management System (LMS).

This component will be conducted under examination conditions and supervised by the University during the Semester One exam/assessment period.