The resources for digital storytelling were awesome. As I visited some of the suggested sites, I was a little overwhelmed with the extensive information available to use as resources and will have to revisit them as I get ready to use digital storytelling as an activity. Digital Storytelling in Plain English was most helpful and I would share this with my class to start the activity. Jennifer Dorman's Wiki offered great ideas to employ scaffolding and the traditional steps to create a storyboard. I particularly thought her framing suggestions "Rule of Thirds" was useful for us non-movie minds. She included some free sites for images and music which will be helpful as students start to work on their individual assignment. I played with Animoto and watched the video. I created a video " A trip of My Life" using their images and music but unable to embed it on this blog. Flixtime site was down for maintenance. I will borrow Jason Ohler's phrase "portals into their minds" as a guide to refer to the process of storyboards. I found Bernajean Porter's Digitals site (Remember her from our in-service?) and somewhere I ended up reading a list of evaluation traits and basic assessment traits to use to grade the activity. The University of Houston's site was a great source for National Educational Technology Standards.
1 point making a digital story in your subject/grade level area or making an assignment to allow students to make one.
The above video example was created using Common Craft for storytelling. It was created in Meghan Weddell's video technology seminar in June. I experienced a quick and easy way to have students create this form of a storyboard and it was fun too!
1 point for reflections in your blog about digital storytelling
This seems to be the future for projects for my classes this next year because it expands the basic power point into a podcast, a slide show, an animation, and a video allowing my students to explore and expand their knowledge and moves me into the role of a facilitator. I decided to use storyboards for the chapter on the brain in order to get them to explain the brain's functions. Students could use their own art, clip art, or photographs as visuals and I can't wait to hear the music they select as background. Storyboard expands the use of cooperative learning and communication which I believe is so important for their future. The brain storyboard functions as a group activity but it also helps to subtly reinforce the information as a review for an upcoming quiz or test. Do you think they will notice that they are learning and not just having fun?
