The Art of Digital Storytelling

     Storytelling is a wonderful way to teach, learn, pass down ideas from generation to generation, and to create fun and excitement. As a teacher, I use storytelling to introduce new concepts or reinforce old ones, hoping that the story will become imprinted on my students' minds so that they will remember it for later use. 

     Whenever I share with my students and begin with... "I have a story to tell you...," suddenly all of my students become quiet and intent listeners. My stories tend to be about my cats Bella and Toby, or my dog Jack doing mischievous things to one another while they think I am not looking. Like the time that Toby decided to "hurl his elephant body up the cat ramp to steal Bella's treats!" I showed my students a picture of the innocent orange, fluffy cat named Toby and they were instantly captured by the green sparkle in his eyes. Then one day I showed a video of Toby climbing the ramp for fodder for a quick write. Poor Toby was the unfortunate victim of childlike jokes and laughter as they wrote about his adventures.

     The pictures and the video of Toby brought the writing alive for my students, and it made me think of incorporating technology into the storytelling itself. I did a search of a variety of digital storytelling tools and ended up choosing www.storybird.com because I wanted my students to be inspired by pictures and to create their stories, much like they were inspired by the videos and photos of Toby. Storybird has a free version of the tool and contains very beautiful layouts and images, it is also easy to use. 

     

      To learn the tool I created my own digital storybook called "Jack's Eyes," which incorporated artistic pictures of all different types of animals, including a dog representing my own dog-Jack. I found the tool very easy to use, once I picked the images I wanted, all I had to do was to choose the layout and drag the image onto the page. The story I wrote was a familiar one to me as I take my dog for long walks on our farm regularly. On these walks Jack is playful, fun, but perhaps a little bit scary (although well meaning) as he engages with the creature world around him. These were the moments that inspired me to write this story, Jack's Eyes.

    I shared the story with my class and they read it with me, all while enjoying the images and the play with language. Since they were very familiar with my Jack stories, they listened intently and oohed, ahed, and chuckled along with the story, knowing how true to my little doggy's nature the digital storybook was. From the story I asked recall, sequencing, and figurative language questions, to which my students eagerly responded. The story was fun and the fact that I created it made it that much more special.

    

     The potential challenges of digital storytelling is that the technology has the potential to outweigh the quality of the writing. In other words, students could end up spending their time painstakingly changing the color or the font of their writing, instead of making sure their writing is engaging to the reader. I have encountered these types of issues before while working on our online digital portfolios. Students have very brief writing, structural issues, or full of grammar errors, and yet they are worrying about the visual effects. The technology of digital storytelling should enhance the quality of the writing, not detract from it.

    

     In conclusion, I learned a lot from working with this technology. I think the biggest learning was how easy the tool is to use. However, the greatest takeaway is how digital storytelling can help writing come alive for even my most reluctant writers; with images to inspire words struggling students can find their voice. I can't wait to introduce my students to this technology and to see what their imaginations create! 

For more information access my presentation on Digital Storytelling here: Digital Storytelling Prezi

     

Learning Network Plan

Overview

This year we had a new technology teacher and she was very creative in her instruction. It was helpful that she was familiar with the third grade curriculum, having taught third grade for many years. My learning network plan includes the third grade team which consists of four teachers and the technology teacher. Our learning network meets once a week with the goal of effectively integrating technology into our curriculum. During 2015 all third grade students were given chrome books for in school and at home use. While the primary purpose of the chrome books was to administer the standardized tests, we were excited about using them for other purposes as well. Although there was some communication to parents about when and what the chrome books could be used for, there was no training offered to teachers on how to use them. Since there was a learning curve we decided to develop a plan that involved three phases: phase 1 included getting comfortable with the chrome books, phase 2 included researching and using technology to improve reading levels, phase 3 included creating online portfolios of student work and developing a plan to integrate technology into the curriculum for next year.

Phase 1:

During phase 1, we met and discussed how we could incorporate the chrome books into our classrooms. We created a list of online resources that we approved and some of these sites included: SUMDOG, ENVISION MATH, GOOGLE DRIVE, GOOGLE CLASSROOM, AND SPELLING CITY. 

Initially, we were very excited to use technology and we were looking for ways to include it into all of our lessons. For example, we typically do Rocket Math for practice of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, so we added the game SUMDOG. Students enjoyed using this technology because they could play against each other and compete. Recently, there was an online competition for the entire county and our third grade classrooms placed in the top three! Also, for math we gave all of our students access to their math information online through the online math site. 

Eventually, we figured out how to setup a google classroom site to post messages and assignments. Then we taught our students how to access the classroom and to login for assignments, writing prompts, and video clips. For example, during our science/social studies block we had our students research whale hunting in Japan. They had to watch a video clip posted to their classroom, read an article on Time For Kids, answer a question that was posted to the classroom site, and present their findings to the class. After we finished this project we posted all of our findings on our bulletin boards and created an online poll to determine how many people were for or against whale hunting.

Some of our learnings during phase 1 of implementing technology in the classroom was that it was better to do less and go deeper. In other words, instead of flooding the students with too many technology activities to choose one or two of them and create them to be meaningful activities that are tied to our program and curriculum. Overall, phase 1 was exciting for both teachers and students; we got to include technology to enhance our program in ways that we were not able to do in the past and we got over the learning curve of understanding how the computers worked.

Phase 2:

During phase 2, we examined various online reading tools to enhance our reading program. We decided to learn and implement two sites: Raz Kids and the affiliated site Learning A to Z. Raz Kids seemed to be a great technology to allow students to read at their own pace and be held accountable to their reading through online assessments and recorded readings, as well as retelling the story. The program contains a variety of reports that can be reviewed and monitored for student progress. The reports also contain alerts about areas that students are having difficulty with. For example, it may say student A has missed the last five questions on story plot. These reports are particularly helpful because you can get a very good idea of problem areas at a quick glance and students can work independently while you work with a small group or a one on one conference. 

We decided to use the Learning A to Z site for teaching specific reading skills or strategies. For example, if a student is struggling with short vowel sounds, we could easily find books and activities that would contextualize these skills and use them in a guided reading group. In this way, Learning A to Z was more of a teacher reference tool, where we can print out different resources to use in our teaching. This is different from Raz-Kids which is much more student directed and teacher monitored.

Phase 3:

Phase 3 of our learning network is still ongoing. During the year
we saved our students writing and kept it in a folder. During our learning network meeting we discussed creating an online portfolio where students can share their work with others online. We created a google portfolio site for each student and began adding their work to the site Google Site. Our student online portfolios are still in progress, but they have been created and students have created a welcome page and uploaded at least two documents to their site. The next step will be to scan in some of their printed work to include in the online portfolio. In this respect, we can also scan in work from other content areas, such as art or spanish. Including other content areas in the portfolio would give a well rounded perspective of each child and also create a feeling of pride in the student's work. The portfolio is intended to be ongoing, so in future years students can create pages that relate to different grade levels. 

Our team is also planning on how to incorporate technology into our program for the upcoming year. We have requested a grant for money to purchase Raz-Kids reading program for the entire school. Additionally, since we have already begun to utilize it, we are going to teach other grade levels how to use the program. We believe that incorporating Raz-Kids into the reading program brings more accountability and transparency to the reading that occurs at home, as well as in the classroom, which in turn would help drive instruction.

Next year, we would like to include more student driven technological activities. For example, create some project based learning such as a web quest for topics such as the Lenape Indians. Our plans are to create a web quest that has students learn all about the culture of the Lenape, such as what kinds of food they ate, what types of homes they lived in, and what kinds of transportation they used. Students can then use digital storytelling to share what they have learned. In conclusion, our learning network will continue to look for ways to add technology to the classroom, while continuing to have conversations about what is working well or not working; technology can be a valuable enhancement to student learning and engagement.