How the iPhone has changed my professional life on PhotoPeach
This story has helped to show how technology (a smart phone) has helped us to communicate, work, play and keep current with information on the go. Teaching about this technology at times require much reading and writing and may cause the audience to loose interest. For this reason PhotoPeach was deliberately chosen. The application creates slideshows with pictures, text and music combined in a sequencing format which helps captivate the audience more effectively than text only.
This tool is useful since it can be used to move students from concrete facts/concepts to very abstract concepts utilising images and sequencing. This image sequencing can be done to show incremental parts of an idea/equipment then show how they amalgamate to perform a complex operation.
I choose this tool mainly because of its ease of use since I could create rich slideshows in very little time (within minutes). I was amazed to see how fast I was able to create the slideshow for my story. In addition the quality of the end product is superb.
The main strength of the storytelling approach is that it presents information in an engaging form which promotes learning. This is consistent with the ISTE/NETS (2008) which advocate that students should be provided opportunities to engage in technology supported activities that enhance their learning experiences.
A disadvantage of the storytelling approach is that people learn different way, and therefore some students may not be interested in storytelling. For example, if a teacher creates a story for the class it may not suit tactile learners. They would prefer to be given the opportunity to create the story themselves.
References:
National Educational Technology Standards for Teachers. Retrieved from http://www.iste.org/standards/nets-for-teachers/nets-for-teachers-2008.aspx