Digital Story
Digital Story #1: Created with Tikatok
View the embedded digital story below or on Tikatok
Digital Story #2: Created with animoto
View the embedded digital story below or on animoto.
You can also view this digital story on YouTube.
Digital Storytelling using Social Media: Reflection
At the beginning of May as I looked over the course outline for ETEC 565A, my interest was piqued as my eyes crossed the words “Digital Storytelling”. As a grade one teacher, my days are filled with telling stories! As I have a SMART Board in my classroom, I have been looking forward to this assignment to see what type of resources I could create to use with my students.
I started out with animoto and created a 30 second piece of my photography titled “Camille’s Lens”. However, I wanted a digital story that I could use in my moodle course, so I created one using Tikatok. I have decided to write about both tools in this reflection.
Is the story viewable either as an embedded file or a link? (5)
Both of my digital stories are embedded on my weblog and are also available as links to animoto and Tikatok. My second digital story is also available to view on YouTube.
Why was this the right tool for you to use to tell your story? Explain how you purposefully selected your tool. (5)
When selecting the tools for my digital stories, I took the National Educational Technology Standards and Performance Indicators for Teachers and Bates and Poole’s SECTIONS framework for selecting and using technology into consideration. I used NETS to justify my choices in a general sense and SECTIONS to look at the specifics of each tool.
NETS
There are 5 main standards for teachers with each standard having four descriptors. While reviewing the standards, I feel that the following three are most applicable to this project:
1. Facilitate and Inspire Student Learning and Creativity
Teachers use their knowledge of subject matter, teaching and learning, and technology to facilitate experiences that advance student learning, creativity, and innovation in both face-to-face and virtual environments. Teachers promote, support, and model creative and innovative thinking and inventiveness.
- Either tool, Tikatok or animoto would inspire and motivate students to share their stories individually or as a class project. Even at a young age, I have found that students are quick to learn processes with computers.
2. Design and Develop Digital-Age Learning Experiences and Assessments
Teachers design, develop, and evaluate authentic learning experiences and assessments incorporating contemporary tools and resources to maximize content learning in context and to develop the knowledge, skills, and attitudes identified in the NETS-S. Teachers design and adapt relevant learning experiences that incorporate digital tools and resources to promote student learning and creativity.
- Many lessons that I currently do with my students could be adapted to include a digital component. I believe that teaching 21stCentury learners demands preparing students for their future and being able to relate to their reality now. By using a novel approach, students will be motivated to reflect on their learning in a purposeful manner.
3. Promote and Model Digital Citizenship and Responsibility
Teachers understand local and global societal issues and responsibilities in an evolving digital culture and exhibit legal and ethical behaviour in their professional practices. Teachers advocate, model, and teach safe, legal, and ethical use of digital information and technology, including respect for copyright, intellectual property, and the appropriate documentation of sources.
- When using animoto, I used rcrdlbl.com for the audio component. According to their terms of service, you can use any .mp3 you download from their site for personal use.
- When using Tikatok, I was able to access Creative Commons for the images in my story. It is important for teachers to not only teach students how to use Web 2.0 applications, but how to use them in a responsible manner.
- Tikatok is designed especially for children, and as such, has many built in safety features ensuring that personal information is kept private and that there is no digital footprint left by the student.
SECTIONS
Bates and Poole (2003) state: “With technology developing at such a rapid pace, teachers and administrators are constantly being faced with the need to make decisions about appropriate technology for teaching” (p.75). They have developed a framework for teachers to work through when selecting learning technologies. The model is as follows:
S Students
E Ease of use
C Costs
T Teaching and learning
I Interactivity
O Organizational issues
N Novelty
S Speed
I carefully considered each point of the SECTIONS framework and would like to comment on a selection here:
Ease of Use
Both tools are very easy for a teacher to use and easy for a student to use, with the proper supports in place. I would use both tools to do class projects where I would upload the necessary images and text. If I were to pursue individual projects, I would work one-on-one with each student or have a tech-savvy parent volunteer work with the student.
Costs
Both tools are open source and as such are free to use.
Interactivity
Both tools allow students to use images to create a story. With Tikatok, students also write text to represent their knowledge. The final products can be hosted on the application’s website or embedded into a classroom website, weblog or wiki.
Describe how a story-telling approach would work within a course you teach or would like to teach using sound pedagogical arguments. (10)
Background:
I teach Grade One, French Immersion. As a grade one teacher, I am a generalist meaning that I teach all of the subjects. The major focus of an immersion program is literacy, not only in the second language, but also in other subjects as well such as math. Integrating technology into my lessons is invaluable and provides a way to differentiate my teaching.
Description:
In my teaching context, I would use Tikatok to create digital storybooks that would be projected up on my SMART Board to be read either as a whole class or individually during literacy centre time. I would have specific expectations for my students and they would be accountable for this work by showing me their work. For example, I would have them use the SMART Board markers to circle the capital letters, periods and high frequency spelling words. I would also use Tikatok to create classroom books collaboratively or even have students create their final copy of a story they had written.
In terms of other literacies, such as math, I would use animoto in an interesting way. I have often sent students out into the hallways of the school armed with a digital camera. They have been “detectives” looking for clues. In this case, I would have students take digital photos of different shapes around the school. From there, they would be taught how to upload the photos to iPhoto and worked with one-on-one to complete a video on shapes in animoto. In animoto, videos are limited to 30 seconds, although educators can apply for an education account that allows full-length videos to be created.
Rationale:
At the grade one level, technology can be used to develop vocabulary and therefore, literacy. Although at this age students will need one-on-one assistance to complete individual projects, it is well worth the time to create collaborative classroom projects. The strength of a fluent reading vocabulary and the ability to understand what is being read are interdependent (Ruddell, 1999). By matching up personal illustrations with text for a story and digital still images with math vocabulary, students are able to represent their knowledge in creative and thoughtful ways. Vacca & Vacca (1998) purport that “for vocabulary to support reading and writing, students need to use words, understand concepts, and appreciate how words are related to the content being studied.” This type of in-depth vocabulary knowledge develops as a consequence of many opportunities to hear, see, and use words in mind engaging ways. (Wepner, Valmont, and Thurlow, 2000)
Conclusion
Digital Storytelling is a wonderful way to enhance curriculum across subject areas. There are many Web 2.0 tools to choose from. That being said, it is wise to evaluate the tool to be sure that it will enhance student learning by providing students with a learner-centered approach. I am very excited at the possibilities and cannot wait to incorporate many of these tools into my teaching and especially with the use of my SMART Board.
References
Bates & Poole. (2003). “A Framework for Selecting and Using Technology.” In Effective Teaching with Technology. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
National Educational Technology Standards for Teachers. Retrieved May 4, 2009 from: http://www.iste.org/Content/NavigationMenu/NETS/ForTeachers/2008Standards/NETS_for_Teachers_2008.htm
Ruddell, M.R. (1999). Teaching children to read and write: Becoming an influential teacher (2nd ed.). Boston: Allyn & Bacon.
Vacca, R.T., & Vacca, J.L. (1998). Content area reading: Literacy and learning across the curriculum (6th ed.). New York: Longman.
Wepner, S.B., Valmont, W.J., & Thurlow, R. (Eds.). (2000). Linking Literacy and Technology: A Guide for K-8 Classrooms. Newark, DE: International Reading Association.