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Wacom Case Studies
 
Australian Primary School Children Illustrate History
St. Francis of Assisi Primary School, Australia
 
 

Background:
In 2005, St Francis of Assisi Primary School of Australia was successful in an application for a Commonwealth Bank e-Learning Grant for AUD$5,000 to purchase Wacom tablets and microphones. Studies had shown that young children often visit websites to hear online myths, legends and fairytales, and enhance their literacy as they do so. Unfortunately there are no online resources for younger children to experience the stories of Indigenous Australia. The St Francis of Assisi project hoped to address this issue by having students participate in the creation of online content. The school proposed that students, after hearing firsthand about Indigenous Australian stories, create material with Wacom tablets for distribution to other students online.
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The Project
With the assistance of an Indigenous storyteller, students wereto use the graphics tablets to paint pictures illustrating simple stories.However, when Indigenous storytellers Janette (Nin) Phillips and George Villaflor visited the students, the school realised that it was more important for the children to hear about the lives of the storytellers themselves. The history of Australia was encompassed within those stories.

The children then took the stories that they heard and began creating illustrations with their Graphire tablets and Painter Essentials. These illustrations were combined with text and the children’s voices in Microsoft Photo Story 3 to create narrated video clips of the illustrations. Illustrating the stories helped the students visualize the experiences of the Indigenous storytellers and encouraged the students to consider their place in the history of their community and country.

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Stories of George's life
   Stories of Nin's life
 
 
 
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Wacom’s support of primary education:
In February 2007, Wacom visited the children at St. Francis of Assisi Primary School to present the school with a new Graphire Bluetooth tablet to congratulate the children on the successful completion of their project and for enhancing the education of children everywhere by sharing their artwork online.
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Links:

● St. Francis of AssisiPrimary School (Australia)
http://www.sfa.cg.catholic.edu.au/students/year5/elearning.html

● VISION (Virtual Independent Schooling through an Interactive Online Network)
http://vision.cg.catholic.edu.au/students/projects/sfa.htm

● Commonwealth Bank e-Learning Grant (Australia)
http://about.commbank.com.au/
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