Page 56 - The Inquiry into the Development and Implementation of a Multimedia Resource to Help Improve Parental Involvement in Their Child’s Reading Literacy During the Primary School Years.

Figure 4.5 (P. Shaughnessy, personal journal entry, March 3, 2017)

Reading starts at a young age and is an essential life skill. It begins at home with

parents reading to and with their children and continues to develop throughout their
schooling and adulthood. Therefore, I felt it was important for the school to provide

the parents with guidance and the necessary tools to ensure they are able to support
their child’s reading literacy to the best of their ability. The reading components can

be clearly communicated using an appropriate medium such as instructional video. I

set about understanding how my skills and talents could be used in a practical
manner to create an interactive and instructional video resource that would

appeal to both our parent community and to the academic progress of our pupils.

Throughout my time as a classroom and ICT teacher, I gained extensive
experience in pedagogy and the use of eLearning technologies and applications

such as Photoshop, Keynote and Final Cut Pro. I have applied creative eLearning
techniques throughout my teaching practice and incorporated the use of technology

into my daily lessons wherever possible. An example of this can be seen in (Video
4.1) where I created a writing prompt video for an in-school short-story writing

competition. This video was shared with the parents to encourage their involvement

with their child’s creative writing skills. During my time on the MSc in Education
and Training Management (eLearning) programme, I further developed my

multimedia and creative skills by gaining a better understanding of the filming and
video editing process and learned how to use various video animation software such

as Animaker and Moovly. I also became adept at using the Articulate Storyline 3

software, an eLearning application I used to embed the seven reading videos. This
application enabled the ‘Parent Learning Zone’ to become more interactive and user-

friendly.

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