I think that in today's technologically-centered world, the act of actually penning (or penciling!) a story on paper has become a foreign concept for many young students. The challenge is to get them excited about story writing and telling, and digital storytelling meets that challenge! In my media class we have discussed and played with several different forms of digital storytelling. We looked at videos, such as this one about a boy who created a cardboard arcade, and this one with no images, just words. We also dipped our toes into Five Card Flickr after talking about how well images alone can tell or inspire a story. There are countless other ways to create digital stories as well (Cool Tools for School, 2017). While these mediums are amazing, they can be a bit complicated if a class or teacher is new to the idea of digital storytelling. By far the easiest method to implement in an elementary classroom, in my opinion, simply uses Google Slides, which is readily available to almost anyone.
Each member of my class created a slide simultaneously, and together our slides created our very own Important Book! In an elementary school classroom this would be an ideal way to incorporate both individual and collaborative work. Depending on the age there are practicalities which should be considered though. As a teacher, you might want to preemptively create a slide for each student, and attach their names to them. This would avoid the confusion that my class had as we all tried to create our own slides in the deck at the same time. I would also suggest creating one example slide as a class, to clearly show what students are expected to do and how they can do it.
Some examples of collaborative digital story topics are: an Important Book, in which each student explores the importance of a specific topic; a book of slides about each students' favourite place in the city; a book that lays out the purpose of each part of a plant; a book that showcases every students' Thanksgiving weekend. The possibilities are truly endless and any grade level can do it! Digital storytelling is a powerful tool (Dillon, 2014) because it interests students who enjoy using technology, and it is something that they can share and be proud of. It is not simply an assignment to hand in to the teacher. Instead the students get to work together and create something amazing, that they can share with anyone - which is particularly easy using the shareable link feature or even creating a QR code (E Flanagan, 2015)! An interesting extension of this activity might involve connecting with another classroom in the world, creating books on similar topics, and sharing the books with each other to see the similarities and differences! References: Cool Tools for School. (2017). Thing 4: Digital Storytelling. Retrieved from https://cooltoolsforschool.wordpress.com/digital-storytelling/. Dillon, B. (December 2014). The Power of Digital Story. Edutopia. Retrieved from https://www.edutopia.org/blog/the-power-of-digital-story-bob-dillon. E Flanagan. (2015). Making Digital Books Google Slides. Retrieved from http://www.erintegration.com/2015/07/09/create-share-digital-books-with-google-slides-for-free/.
1 Comment
Helen DeWaard
10/12/2017 05:48:07 am
Your beginning sentence got me hooked to read more -"the act of actually penning (or penciling!) a story on paper has become a foreign concept for many young students". Has our default teaching mode for writing become using technology? This dramatically change the writing process, doesn't it! I'm an advocate for putting pencil/pen/marker to paper - getting that proprioceptive feedback when dragging an implement across a page. But I also understand the daunting feeling when faced with a blank page!
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AuthorCassy. Teacher in training, student, reading enthusiast, and dog mom. Archives
January 2018
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