By leveraging edtech, the unique characteristics and techniques of Hagi-ware pottery were brought to life to teach students about traditional local art and crafts. Shizue Fukigami, Jougen Elementary School, Mine City, Yamaguchi prefecture.
Outline of the Class
Students examined actual examples of Hagi-ware pottery brought in by the teacher and shared and discussed what they already knew about it and what they could tell or guess by feeling and looking at the pottery together in class.
The teacher had pre-prepared a set of eight text Cards with photographs showing the different steps of the process to create Hagi-ware pottery. She showed the class one photograph from the set and asked them to try and guess what activity it showed.
Next, students were challenged to use supplementary lesson materials and the Internet to find out the activities depicted in the remaining seven photographs and rearrange them in order. At the same time, they also researched and customized the Cards with memos, images, and other reference materials giving extra facts and details about the pottery.
Each student presented their findings to the rest of the class using the projector. Finally, they watched a documentary about craftspeople making Hagi-ware pottery in order to refine their understanding and knowledge further and to link to the next lesson’s topic, namely, the preservation and transmission of traditional local culture and crafts.
LoiLoNote's Application
For Grade 3 students in this mixed grade class, who find it harder to focus on reading and processing textual information, setting an image-based quiz worked extremely well. They approached the quiz with energy and enthusiasm but also learned a lot about traditional pottery techniques along the way by absorbing visual as well as textual information.
LoiLoNote’s dedicated search site and hassle-free editing of Cards meant it was easy for students to research and collate appropriate materials from the Internet as well as from classroom materials such as set textbooks and sidereaders, and to customize the original Cards with their own comments, memos, images to show the results of their research.
By providing high-quality visual materials such as video and photographs as well as actual examples of pottery, it was possible for students to encounter traditional crafts and their production techniques from the classroom without necessitating travel to a remote factory or workshop. The ‘virtual field trip’ enabled saving on associated costs of time and money while not sacrificing the benefits and enrichment offered by traditional school outings.
A Voice from the Classroom
Teacher Shizue Fukigami said, “In Area Studies, students’ understanding of the attitudes and conditions of working people is supposed to be enhanced through actual educational visits and experiences. However, due to time constraints, it often turns into a paper-based classroom lecture, so I was delighted to be able to contrive a way to turn it into a ‘pseudo-field trip’ using LoiLoNote.”
“Students were required to add their own written memos and comments to the Cards rather than just orally explaining the images and videos in the text Cards, which prompted active learning and also gave them an opportunity to practice organizing information and writing coherently. They also learned technical skills such as how to resize, paste, highlight and manipulate images and practiced basic presentation skills since it was easy to hook it up to the projector.”