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Mixing tech and teaching with Primary Education at Cardiff Met

Max Baron
Max Baron

When you’re studying Primary Education at Cardiff Met there are lots of opportunities to have new experiences. One of my favourite ones so far involved working with a year 6 class from a school in Llantwit Major to make a song and a music video.

It was a digital competency project – where we learn to take a subject or two and incorporate the use of technology within them. We’ve learned through our course that this is becoming more and more important in the curriculum for primary schools. I was very nervous going into the school at the start of the project, but as time went on I built up a lot more confidence from talking to new people every day.

school

I soon got used to speaking to pupils and teachers with a bit of practice.

For the video I decided to use the song Happy, by Pharrell Williams – everyone loves that song! Once I’d figured out the song that I was going to use, it was time to work out what the children would like to do in the music video.

planning

There was some serious debate involved in planning the video!

We had the idea that for every couple of lines, the children would decide on a new backdrop for the video which we would create using green screen. This was pretty daunting as I had to figure out how to use the green screen when editing (I could do a whole other blog post about that!). It was also daunting having to lead the whole of the year 6 class through the project!

editing

Learning how to edit the video was a challenge!

It helped me learn so many skills, and not just how to use tech in teaching. For example, I had to really nail my timings. I had to plan carefully to make sure there would be enough time to deliver the full lessons. I also needed to manage the timing of the project as a whole so that I didn’t run out of time before I finished my first year.

I even had to make sure that the transitions between the music video and the children singing were spot-on. I failed many times but it definitely paid off in the end.

It also helped me develop my creative thinking – I had to think of what the project was going to involve from the music piece to the different types of backgrounds, even how long the video would be.

I took part in this project because I knew it would be great for my CV. I’m studying on my course because I want to go into teaching and I’m hoping this project will help me secure a place on the PGCE course afterwards. It’s competitive, so getting as much experience as possible is important, whether it’s voluntary work or uni projects – it shows that you have initiative.

Even better, this project turned out to be lots of fun as well!

Want to know more about Cardiff Met students learning in the workplace? Check out our employability and work placement blogs, or watch a video of our Primary Education students working with local schools below.