Been thinking lately about how digital story telling can really work for a lot of kids who have writing issues, like my son. Digital story telling offers a way to present knowledge/understanding using organization and creativity without the difficult writing/handwriting process. And I mean not only handwriting, but keyboarding as writing as well.
I am going to apply to pilot the use of iPod touch as a tool to create podcasts at my elementary school. I think that until they Touch gets a built in camera, we will primarily use it as a recording device. There are headsets with microphones and earbuds which I am hoping will make it easier to record in a classroom setting. There are always recording issues. The Touches do have wifi and safari for internet access. And there are quite a few apps, but I have to investigate whether you actually create the podcast on the touch or record and sync the audio to a desktop/laptop for the actual creation in like Garageband or whatever.
I am so interested to hear other teachers' opinions about podcasting/digital story telling because of how "wed" to the writing process teachers can become sometimes, for obvious reasons. I think I see this because at the level of language learning/acquisition that my students are, they do almost no writing, just language production. So I know there are alternative means of expression/presentation/assessment that can be used effectively. Storyboarding is a big element in good digital storytelling which is an organizational tool. The editing process is well, just that, editing...choosing the most important material to include and checking for meaning/correctness. A well done digital story can be a very complete representation of a students thoughts/understanding/ideas.
I keep meaning to read more of the text Digital Storytelling in the Classroom, but quite frankly not only is it like a user's manual, which I am notorious for eschewing in favor of just trying things out, but it's also dry as toast and about as indigestible.
I'm proud of myself for finally quieting my mind enough to finish another assignment and thankful that I have 2 days over this teacher's convention that I can spend some time and get things done.
What grade do you teach? My 8th graders are always writing and I am always trying to find ways to have them think "outside the box." I feel that the technology helps me to do that. An example of something I did recently was to provide several writing prompts on line through "Discovery Education" with associated pictures. My District provides this tool. The students were able to choose the prompt that they were interested in. So not only did they submit online, but I was simultaneously able to offer differentiated instruction.
ReplyDelete