Oral Communivation and M-LEARNING in the primary school English Classroom: photography and video as a resource

Abstract

The process of design, implementation and evaluation of the project ‘Films & Photographs: An M-learning Experience in Primary Education’ is presented in this article through the action research methodology. The project’s main objective was to foster oral communication in the English language (as an additional language) using mobile devices in primary education through photography and video. Two primary school teachers of English, two university lecturers and an in-service teacher advisor from the Teachers’ Training and Resource Centre participated in the project. The pupils, between ten and twelve years old, belonged to two different schools in the Principality of Asturias, Spain and the project was developed during the school year 2015-2016. The techniques used to collect data were participant observation, semi structured-interviews and a questionnaire. The activities were focused on the use of mobile devices (smartphones and tablets) to produce and edit videos and photographs. The results show students and teachers’ positive perception about m-learning since they consider it has directly influenced the motivation to carry out the proposed tasks. All this has an effect on the improvement of the communicative, technological and artistic competences in the primary education context.