Okay, if you have not taken a detailed look at University of Houston's Digital Storytelling website…you should do it and spend some time looking. This was a great site! Education is a great arena to use digital storytelling. I was just thinking as I started to look at this site how great it would be more history. I feel like we are so rushed sometimes I say and so the “Boxer Rebellion happened.” Some of those quick topics can be shown in 2 minutes time and really give the students a more valuable learning experience. The nice thing about digital storytelling is that it can be short, sweet and to the point but still have a lot of impact and range from personal topics to more historical themes. Teachers can use to hook students at the start of a unit, enhance units or assign student’s to research topics while students can learn how to deeply research the internet, synthesize large amounts of material into a smaller product with statements with great impact. Also students can practice communication and narratives as well increase computer skills. The benefits include the fact that viewing or making digital stories appeal to diverse learning styles, tapping into creative sides of students, create interest and enthusiasm, grabs attention of learners as audience or creators and finally blends cross curriculum standards. If you are stumped on how can you apply this to what you teach, check out the examples link that include samples for topics such as music, art, health, social studies, ESL, religion, pop culture, language arts or even math! Digital story could use to teach any topic, promote club activities, gather support for a community/global effort (ex: promote school wide drive aiding in the recovery of Haiti), and end of the year sum up of years activities. Media Specialists can play a huge role in digital storytelling beyond just teaching how to use it to teachers and students but also keeping an archive of them. As students and teachers creating, linking them to a wiki or media webpage would be a great asset to teacher…rather than reinventing the wheel, teachers can see what is already created so they can use. Also, an important element of a media specialist job is to promote what they do and the media program…what better way to do it than though a digital story showing what they do, how they teach, collaborate, and reflections of teachers and students on the role of the media specialists.
My media center does not have/circulate ebooks and in fact I had not even heard of them until I took the Selections class at West Georgia and we had to include them in one of our orders. I think that ebooks/fiction may need a little bit more time to diffuse…I am not sure how receptive students would be with them. I think as items like the iPad and Kindle become more popular, students will “accept” and join the band wagon on this trend too. I did not realize that some ebooks are free and the Gutenburg website is great to look a t what is available free and it is really easy to use! You can search by author or title. I just randomly typed in a few books and most did bot come up so I thought it was easy to search under “Top 100” or “Recent Books.” The International Children’s Literature site is about the same but I thought it was more user friendly. This would be important for student use I think. I think that both of these tools could be really useful…especially since they are easy to use and free. Though we don’t have fiction ebooks, we still have online sources that are used but I am surprised how little they are used. I think this goes back to poor promotion of library resources. Students are introduced again to Cobb Virtual Library only at freshmen orientation. I just did a project the other day and I told the kids not to just google items but go to better sources and I suggested CVL and they were dumbfounded. I asked them how often they use these online sources and many said I didn’t know we could…then I was dumbfounded! The basic ebooks that we have are through Cobb Virtual Library and include mostly online encyclopedias such as World Book, World Book Advanced, Grolier Passport (3 encyclopedias combined), Britannica, and History Reference Center.
The last few things that I reviewed dealt with very recent trends such as the Kindle and iPad, both of which will change libraries to a point but I still think that many people (myself included) like to curl up on the couch with a book not a piece of “equipment. I like the spell, the hold, turning the pages…the book. This for me won’t change it seems to be too impersonal! I want to cuddle with my book. : ) After saying that, kids/students are experiencing books differently. If I did not grow up “turning the pages” maybe it would not be such a big deal. So, if kids in elementary schools are exposed to them and this is the “norm” what will happen to MY books?!?!? I don’t want riddles (sorry Mr. Green) just my nice story but this I can see being really interactive for younger students. It can engage them in a way that a traditional book engages me…because the bottom line is that students learn differently and technology is here to stay.
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Suzanne, you have stated some great ideas to use with digital storytelling. I believe digital storytelling is a great way to capture your students attention. Having students make their own digital stories is a great way for them to practice their communication skills, and their technology skills. With digital storytelling you can capture all types of learners. Students are definitely sure to enjoy them.
ReplyDeleteI think most students would enjoy the fact of it being a "new" technology. Personally myself I am like you Suzanne. I like actually turning the pages of the book, and having it right in front of me. There is just something about it.
My students in Pre-K LOVE, LOVE, LOVE to listen to books on CD's! They ask all the time if they can listen to the story on CD. I havent figured out if it is because they know one of the students gets to sit in the middle of the circle and turn the pages or if they really like listening! :) Maybe both!
I agree with you on Houston’s Digital Storytelling website. I can’t wait until I have a little more time so I can fully explore the website. At my school, we have actually been using digital storytelling for several years now. Some teachers started with Movie Maker when it came loaded on our new desktops but found some problems with using it with students on the school’s network. Several teachers then switched to Photo Story 3 which I actually prefer to use with middle school students due to its simplicity and ease of use. One of my favorite projects I did with my Computer Applications students is to have them create a digital story in Photo Story about their own lives. They had to pick a certain aspect of their life (i.e. favorite sport), bring in digital pictures to upload or print pictures that could be scanned, and present their final product to the class. It was kind of an ice-breaker for students to learn about each other and also allowed them to work on their presentation skills.
ReplyDeleteI really like your idea of using digital stories to promote media center activities.
I also work in Cobb County and too am perplexed as to why our students still repeatedly forget to use the CVL. These are great resources and with the way the budget is I am afraid that we will lose them if students do not use them.
Suzanne, you are so right about the concise nature of digital storytelling... with studying history, so often you have to just cover the "what happened" without much depth; whereas in two minutes, you have gotten into more depth and can still stay on track.
ReplyDeleteI also like using films to introduce themes or background information--I hate lecture. Last year, I introduced To Kill A Mockingbird with a Jim Crow visual using a remix of "Strange Fruit" by Tricky. They were speechless for a minute, but when discussion began, they had lots of relevant comments.
As an English teacher, I use digital storytelling as another means of composition. Elements of composition, from brainstorming to collecting, from organizing to revision, are all there. Limiting the minutes of the film helps focus their vision.
The only thing I don't like about WMM is that there is no spell check/grammar check feature to help catch their errors. I ding them big time on those, since there are so few words.
Thanks for a great post.