In my Teaching with Technology course, we were asked to create either a Digital Storytelling or WebQuest project. While WebQuest seemed like a lot of fun to create, I think I might have gone overboard with the extent of the project. Additionally, I felt that being experienced in movie-making would be a more useful skill at the primary level, as students typically do not have the level of self-regulation required for an extensive online project like a WebQuest.
My original plan for Digital Storytelling was to give a brief history of the Olympic Games. Watching the opening ceremonies, I was inspired. Unfortunately, I wanted to have authentic, primary source images, which were hard to come by. The only images I could find for the Ancient Games were of naked men – and I’m not sure how my 2nd graders would handle that. Any modern images, too, were strict with permissions and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to risk using someone’s Creative Commons picture of the copyrighted Olympic Rings logo – it seems like a scary “limbo” area. After assembling all my pictures and music, I scrapped that project in favor of a new one.
The second project I decided to do about a historical figure I admire. It didn’t take me long to realize who I wanted it to be about – and the bonus was that he died long enough ago that all images and cartoons of him would be in the public domain in the United States. I wanted the final project to be a brief biography of his awesomeness. I took this opportunity to better acquaint myself with Movie Maker and Audacity, not necessarily to create something for my 2nd graders, so the audience is more mature. Many will remember his accomplishments from any US History class, but this is designed to be either a refresher or very general introduction to Theodore Roosevelt.
You can view my finished product here.
I still encountered some issues, though, with audio. I was told to keep recording, even if I stumbled up, because the Audacity program could record over those. After much frustration, the best I could do was delete the stumbled portion altogether, and the remaining recording would combine. Since I had recorded the whole thing, without stopping to re-record, timing never quite lined up. In the finished product, you will hear my voice catch quite a few times – that was a result of this issue. I did re-record a few times, so these catches are minimal compared to the first few drafts. Next time I work with this audio editing program, I will be a perfectionist in the moment of recording instead of in editing, since my recording skills are far more advanced than my editing skills at this point.
This type of project can help engage students, since they are typically more interested in watching a video than a live person. This addresses ISTE Standard 1: Facilitate and Inspire Student Learning and Creativity in that it can both me used as a presentation style of new material as well as a way for students to showcase what they’ve learned. I think my next digital storytelling project could go over very well in Religion class. Sometimes reading a story in the textbook is much less effective than having someone read the story with related images that would engage more senses. Adding some media variety to this class might make it more exciting. Having students work with this type of program, though, might prove difficult since recording audio on our iPads could get fairly noisy. It could be beneficial for a longer-term project, though, when we could dedicate more time to production quality.
Andrea Teaches 