Bryan Funk E-folio

China’s Three Gorges Dam

I have done digital stories before but only ever for personal use.  I’ve made them for family and friends using photographs that in some instances have taken years to acquire.  The digital story that I have put together this time was much more challenging and time consuming.  The Three Gorges Dam Project on the Yangtze River in  China was and still is a controversial issue.  I have used it as part of the culminating assignment in my grade 9 science class for the last couple years. Each year I introduce the project with the discussion from the text book  then a few images from the internet.  I have used this opportunity to create a digital story as an introduction to the discussion about the Three Gorges Dam.  The intent is to provide some questions that will provoke thought and create interest in the assignment. 

What was challenging about this project was finding images to represent the different issues I wanted to address and at the same time make sure that credit is given for using the images.  There are quite a few sites that  offer copyright free images.  Despite being copyright free, it is still a great idea to train all students to check the site’s terms of use and to credit their sources when copying pictures from the internet.  I chose to use PhotoStory 3 for this assignment which worked pretty well.  It lacks a tool to create title slides or to animate any of the text so  I used PowerPoint to create some slides and then the screen capture tool in NoteBook 10 to save the slides as jpeg images to be inserted into the story.  I actually could have animated the slides and recorded this to insert into the story…….maybe next time.  As you can see I then uploaded the PhotoStory file to YouTube and have embedded the code into this post. 

I then realized (thanks to John’s posting in the discussion) that I was going to have to do it again using a web 2.0 tool. This time I chose One True Media for my digital story. Well now that I have the images it took 20 minutes to sign up for an account, upload the photos, create a couple title slides and get the embed code. Pretty simple and I actually like the tool better than Photostory even without an upgrade.

It was eye opening to me, the amount of time required to collect images to fit into the storyboard if it is not something that you have a record of personally.  I think digital stories have a valuable place in assessment for students that wish to use them and there are an abundance of ideas for using this tool in my context which is grade 1-9.  I have had students use digital story telling to make instructional videos, showing school and/or classroom rules.  Activities with students creating the rules, acting/modeling appropriate behaviour at the start of the year, taking digital pictures of what is expected of them and then making a movie of the ‘rules’ have produced some fantastic results and ownership from the students.  The idea of having students create book trailers is a possible way to motivate students to read, and to share with other students.  For students who are in need of extension, digital storytelling could be used in lieu of their producing written work.  They could be given the same assignment as others but have to find/choose pictures rather than words.  For students who struggle with coming up with words,  they could create a digital story using a combination of a digital story plus their own spoken word.   Instead of doing a book report students could illustrate the book they read in pictures.

I have seen many of these activities work but they are very dependant on access to reliable technology and providing students with the time that is required to do quality work.