I decided to write a story about space travel that incorporated some factual information in it. The reason I chose this topic is because the unit I am creating is about space. I thought a story that relates to the unit I am creating would be a great tool that I could use in the future with my students.
There are so many different options for creating a digital story. I enjoyed exploring and learning about these tools. I even began creating my story using a different tool but in the end, I ended up creating a digital story book using the tool TikaTok. I chose this tool because I wanted to learn to use a program that I could teach my students to use in the future. My students already write stories and illustrate them. They even type their stories out on the computer and find pictures on the internet that they paste into their stories. I felt that this program was a good transition from what they are already doing to a more sophistication program for creating a story book.
TikaTok tool has templates and some pictures that can be used but the story has to come from the imagination of the writer. It is based on written text because the program does not include an audio component. I found that the photo gallery had some great pictures that I could use in my story. However, I was not fully able to express what I wanted using those pictures. Hence, I had to look for images that I thought would go well with the picture my story was trying to paint. For example, I wanted my main character Raaheen to be able to have different expressions in the story. In order to do this, I had to use Windows Paintbrush to create and edit pictures of Raaheen with different facial expressions.
I believe the mixture of the text I had written with pictures I chose and created, resulted in a good combination of imagination and information. Hence,when using this program the author is able to share his or her vision but the readers can still look at the pictures and use them to weave different understandings of the story in their minds.
After using this tool I realized it is fairly time consuming and it may be a little frustrating for students. Students would have to find pictures and upload them. They would have to copy, paste and format text. They would also have to make sure that everything fit nicely on the template. Although this may be a frustrating task to work on, I do not think my students would be incapable. In fact, I think they would do a great job. The main thing about using programs such as these is to play around with them and learn through trial and error and net generation children are great at this.
Now that I know how to use this tool, I would definitely use it as a means of creating visual and engaging stories that could be used to tech my students’ concepts. This program allows for flexibility in the teaching setting. It is great because the link to a story can be emailed or it can be embedded in a website. Hence, my students could have access at school and at home. It is pretty simple to sign up for an account on Tickatok. Once a teacher signs up s/he can get his or her students to sign up. The teacher can even have access to the sotries students are creating.
I see how engaged students are when they are using the computer. I have also seen how excited they become when they are allowed to jazz up their stories. Hence, I have no doubt in my mind that this tool would result in heightened engagement with story writing and a desire to make the best final product as possible.
Link to my story:Â http://www.tikatok.com/view/shared/168cee3e176ec2b67c82cee05b3db564
