Week #4

      Digital storytelling tells a story through the use of pictures, music, and animations. I feel digital storytelling is an amazing tool to use in the classroom because of the emotion it can evoke, and for the learning that can take place. Some sites, such as Animoto, takes a few selected photos, and turns them into a professional looking slideshow. There are many different sites and programs you can use to create a digital story, however, I believe it is important for one to consider the purpose of why you are creating this, and who your audience is. Some sites are more advanced then others, well some are basic to create a quick slideshow. If the teacher has a clear purpose in mind, exploring a few sites would help the teacher decide which options to give his/her students.
   
      I think digital storytelling could be used for a variety of different grades and subject areas. For younger students, the teacher could suggest a basic program to help students easily create their stories, well considering how much time is available.

      I believe this could be a good tool for teachers to help get to know their students during the first few days of school. For example, the teacher can give the students a choice of choosing any (appropriate) pictures to tell a story about themselves. In it they could include pictures of themselves, their family and friends, any pets, favourite things to do, etc. I believe giving the students choice in what they want to share with their teacher and the class is important.

      Students could also use this in any project, or assessment to show key areas of understanding. For example, if students were learning about different types of endangered, extinct, and threatened animals, they could have a heading and text to show the different category in which different animals fell under. In this unit they probably would have learned about different reasons for the animals extinction, which they could then insert text to demonstrate the students understanding of this process. This would also be a good teaching moment to talk about copyright issues when using photos off the internet. The teacher could show the students different techniques to find photos that are legal to use in their story.

      When the year or semester is coming to an end, the student could take different pictures of his or her art (or any subject) work over the year, and show this to their parents, possibly at student-led conferencing or parent teacher interviews. The students could also do this with any projects they have created over the year. Allowing the students take pictures and teaching them basic components of photography and uploading photos would add a whole new learning component to computer class. This is a reason I love digital storytelling because I believe the options are endless! I feel I will use this in my classroom whenever possibly because I believe students have fun creating digital stories, while it allows other students to watch their work and it has the ability to increase learning!