Teaching 'Transportation' through Simulation

 

Teaching the Modes of Transportation” in Our Country through Simulation

In this blog, I will be writing on how to teach on the modes of transportation from the textbook of Social Studies, grade four integrating ICT. There are many interesting and useful topics in this text book.  However this particular topic “Transportation” appeals me the most as it is very significant and relevant to our daily activities. In addition, it is convenient to integrate ICT tools in effective way to teach about transportation because it is very inconvenient to take and show concrete about transportation in the classroom setting or it’s beyond out thought.

 Therefore I decided to integrate one of the ICT tools in this topic and convey the content to my students. I also found that integrating ICT is always a plus point for teachers, facilitators’ learners and any other educators as it can capture the information in advance way (past, present, and future).

Creation of the teaching material

I have created the simulation in Microsoft power point presentation as a constructive tool on the topic “Transportation” for grade four under the subject social studies by making the best use all the features and tools. To accomplish my satisfying simulation, firstly, I chose an intriguing topic and grade level. Next I have gathered requisite ingredients like related pictures, GIF, and sound related to the topic from the Google and kept in one folder. Unlike other power point presentations, I started making the presentation/simulation in one slide which was challenging.

In the first slide, I inserted the shape ‘rectangle’ and then changed the colour from the ‘shape fill’ to create the background scene of my starting simulation. After that I inserted the text box to write text and followed by the inserting of related pictures. In between I have also looked at the colour combination of the text and the background scene. Soon after the slide accommodated enough information, I applied my own choice of animation to the pictures and to the text by clicking on the ‘Animation’ tool bar. At that instant, I also looked at the animation effect where I set the timing (delay and duration) and kept animation start with previous.

Chasing that, I have inserted again rectangle shape to make background scene as same as initial one and the colour was also same like before. Thenceforth the same step was followed but to insert sound/audio I clicked on insert tool bar where different options will be displayed and from that select audio option followed by selecting sound/audio from the correct file/desktop. Eventually I kept volume of the sound low from the ‘PLAY BACK’ tool bar. This process has been done till my content of the topic was completed.

At the end I opened the ‘animation pane’ to make the duration and time.  For the start under the ‘ANIMATION tool bar I selected ‘With Previous’ throughout the slide. After that I adjusted the pane to appear in sequence. I also added background music and kept the music volume low in order to have clear narration. Next, I dragged the music in the animation pane at the top. I also hide the sound icon from ‘Hide during the Show’ under ‘PLAYBACK tool bar’. I kept the option for this song to be played from beginning till the last slide’. I did my narration part at the end using ‘Record slide show’ option under record ‘SLIDESHOW’ tool bar. So these are all about how I created my simulation on ‘Transportation’. My simulation consist of six different modes of transportation, little bit of description and an activity to evaluate their learning.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1unn-OhI3Zt_5_NCELIiAK_vRoxhBon1m/view?usp=sharing

Instructions for how, where and how to use the content-based material

With paradigm shift in 21^st pedagogy of teaching and learning, the way teachers’ teaches should be more evolved and flow with the trends. Using simulation or integrating ICT will eventually fill-up the gap between traditional and current means of teaching and learning. So, using my developed simulation will help students to retain content information for the longer terms. This material will boost students’ interest to learn. It also helps in displaying past, present and future events so that learners will ingest all sort of wisdom.

After looking at the several advantages, I developed this simulation where I will use for conveying the content during lesson development. Unlike olden days where information is ingested by teacher just lecturing or following the same routine in the classroom every time by reading the text, I will use my simulation as an instructional and fundamental role to discourse the topic by letting them relate with that of their life. Using this will also create more engaging sensory experience. After that students will engage in doing activity. The activity instructions were also briefed in the simulation after the definition of transportation.

How to do an activity: Activity Instructions

This activity is mainly designed to check students understanding on the topic. There are set of questions and it consists of five different questions related to the content. An activity need to be carried out individually and need to be done in ‘Google Classroom’ and the instruction of activity will be instructed to students through simulation only.

I will also upload simulation developed in our ‘Google Classroom’ for students to refer and do their activity in ‘Google Classroom’ only.

Thank you.