How did the tool impact the manner in which you told your story (perhaps in a way that is different had you just used text or related the story using your voice)? <\/strong><\/p>\nIt actually ended up being more work for me than using the tools I normally use (iMovie or iPhoto). The reason being is that I had to first organize my pictures and put them into a single folder outside of iPhoto. Also, at first glance, the upload tool seems like it will be the only chance to upload pictures. However, after uploading, sorting, adding captions, and adding music I soon learned that you can go back and edit captions, insert more pictures, and change the soundtrack. It would have been nice to have known that up front.<\/p>\n
How might you use such tools in your own teaching to produce materials for students?<\/strong><\/p>\nI teach at an international school in Beijing, China. Aside from French and Chinese classes, our curriculum is taught in English and is based on a Canadian curriculum. However, our students come from thirty-five countries, and ninety-five percent of them speak English as their second, third, or fourth language.\u00a0 Our school has six English proficiency levels, one being beginner with almost no English proficiency and six being fluent or a native speaker.\u00a0 In classes that have English speakers below a level three, covering the entire New Brunswick, Education curriculum is difficult and rarely attained. As all of our core subjects are taught in English, it is very important that our students acquire their English skills as quickly as possible so that they can advance to the next grade level.\u00a0\u00a0 Engaging students in digital story telling is providing them a medium through which they can express themselves where they are actively engaged in the learning process.\u00a0 Students thus actively build their own learning experience through sharing their writing and ideas with their peers listening as an authentic audience (Skinner & Hagood).<\/p>\n
However, I would be somewhat cautious about the security of PhotoPeach. It seems the only way to embed your story is by making your project public. Students would first need to learn about Internet safety and what information is safe to publish online and what isn’t.<\/p>\n
How might students be given access to the same authoring tools?<\/strong><\/p>\nBecause these tools are all available online, all a student needs to create a photo story is a computer with access to the Internet. To make the stories more personal, it would be great if they had access to their own digital pictures. However, if they have no pictures of their own, they could find pictures on the Internet to include in their stories (obeying copyright rules).<\/p>\n
What kind of impact would you expect to see in your students in terms of motivation, creativity, or any other characteristics?<\/strong><\/p>\nIn addition to informational technology skills, creating digital stories about their own culture provides a medium through which English language learners acquire foundational literacies while making sense \u201cof their lives as inclusive of intersecting cultural identities and literacies (Skinner & Hagood, p. 29).\u201d with their work organized, students can then present their work to the classmates for discussion and feedback, build a digital library of age\/content appropriate material, and share their stories with global communities (Skinner & Hagood).<\/p>\n
Cheers,<\/p>\n
John<\/p>\n
References<\/p>\n
Skinner, Emily N. & Hagood, Margaret C. (2008). \u201cDeveloping Literate Identities With English Language Learners Through Digital Storytelling.\u201d The Reading Matrix<\/em>, 8(2), 12 \u2013 38.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hi everyone, I used PhotoPeach to create my story. My wife and I moved to Beijing in the fall of 2007 and we’ve been traveling around Asia whenever we get a break from teaching. The story I’ve made is a very brief synopsis of some of our travels thus far. You can view the story […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-64","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/stringeretec565\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/64","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/stringeretec565\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/stringeretec565\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/stringeretec565\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/stringeretec565\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/stringeretec565\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/64\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":65,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/stringeretec565\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/64\/revisions\/65"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/stringeretec565\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}