Digital Storytelling

My digital story: "When I Become a Teacher"

       Digital storytelling can be a wonderful resource to utilize in the classroom. by using digital storytelling, students have the opportunity to be more creative, individual, and excited about "writing". According to Jason Ohler, digital storytelling can "enhance students' skills in critical thinking, expository writing, and media literacy" (Ohler). It also gives students who are more introverted or quiet a chance to express themselves, and gives students who might have short attention spans an engaging and fun assignment. 

       Personally, I'd much rather spend 3 hours putting together digital media in a creative way than writing a boring paper, and I challenge you to find a middle-school student who would feel differently. This is not to say that proper writing in paper essay form is not important or necessary (because I strongly feel that it is), but that digital storytelling can be a useful tool to take what students have learned from traditional assignments to the next level. The most important thing to remember, is to focus on the story first, and the digital medium later (Ohler). 

       Often in media assignments, students (and instructors) can get caught up in the bells and whistles and be severely lacking content. It is recommended by Ohler that "teachers use story mapping and practicing written and oral storytelling before bringing in digital components....A story map is a one-page diagram showing how the essential components of a story are incorporated into the overall flow of the narrative," (Ohler). 

       By making sure a solid foundation of the core content has been built first, digital storytelling then becomes an effective tool to demonstrate what has been learned. This type of assignment helps bring learning into our media rich 21st century, and makes active participation in the classroom fun, engaging, and relevant.

       Since I will be teaching science, I feel that digital storytelling can be VERY effective since science relies so heavily on visual resources (diagrams, charts, etc).I feel that making students present their understanding with digital media can be a very effective way to ensure they are truly grasping the concept, as compared to something in the order of a multiple choice test. 

       Here is a great example of a student-created video on the cell cycle. By having to create and explain all the images themselves, this can really demonstrate how well they understand what is happening in each phase of the cell cycle. I plan to incorporate assignments such as this into my teaching!

Sources:

• Ohler, Jason. "The World of Digital Storytelling." Educational Leadership. December 2005/January 2006. n. page. Web. 30 Apr. 2013. <http://www.jasonohler.com/pdfs/digitalStorytellingArticle1-2006.pdf>.

• The Cell Cycle: http://www.teachertube.com/viewVideo.php?video_id=12195

WebQuest Reflection and Analysis

"A real WebQuest is a scaffolded learning structure that uses links to essential resources on the World Wide Web and an authentic task to motivate students’ investigation of an open-ended question, development of individual expertise, and participation in a group process that transforms newly acquired information into a more sophisticated understanding. The best WebQuests inspire students to see richer thematic relationships, to contribute to the real world of learning, and to reflect on their own metacognitive processes."- Tom March


Based on the 6 characteristics given in The Learning Power of WebQuests by Tom March, our WebQuest (Roman Government Systems) meets all the criteria for being effective. I have chosen 3 of the characteristics to explain in more detail, and display how our WebQuest effectively meets those standards.

• Use of Essential Internet Resources: Real WebQuests make good use of the Web for effective learning. Traditional assignments often do not take advantage of interactive or media-rich activities and modern perspectives  A good WebQuest should make learning the content more effective than a traditional assignment by use of these resources.

• Our WebQuest takes full advantage of digital media and web literacy. Not only does the assignment rely almost exclusively on internet-based research, it also employs online media tools to facilitate the research process and final project (Google Forms, Prezi, Flash Cards App). Even the assignment process and instructions integrate digital resources (YouTube) to explain the requirements and provide essential background information.

• Individual Expertise: A real WebQuest typically has "roles" for the students to take on. This allows individual students to become and expert in a particular area. By working from a specialized perspective, the team is more likely to reflect "how knowledge is obtained and applied in everyday situations". Individual understanding reflects how everyone can contribute something different when trying to solve problems.

• Our WebQuest assigns each individual member with a role. Each member is responsible for researching one form of government, before coming together as a group to decide which form is best. By allowing each member to be responsible for one specialized area, they become an "expert" with that topic. Therefore, when it is time for the group to come together, the individuals are held responsible for their particular assigned form of government by each other. This promotes self-responsibility as well as personal satisfaction and value that each member is a vital part of the group, and everyone's information, though different, is equally important to the overall goal.

• Transformative Group Process: When considering if a WebQuest's group process is effective, it is helpful to ask two questions: First, Could the answer be copied and pasted? Second, Does the task require students to make something new out of what they have learned? If both these questions are are met, chances are the WebQuest does promote effective group processing. By making students engage in a quest that makes them put their acquired knowledge into action, students will have a deeper understanding of the topic. 

• Our WebQuest not only asks the question "which form of government worked best for ancient Rome"  but also "which form of government would you choose for a new country (that students must create)?". By doing so, we employ a transformative WebQuest strategy of asking why a particular option will thrive best in a given situation. This forces the students to go beyond a yes-or-no question, and face a more interesting challenge. Allowing them to create their own country and make decisions for it is also empowering, and promotes group learning since they must work together to come to a decision. This takes them beyond just learning the curriculum content, and promotes effective networking and problem solving skills. Forcing them to "choose a side" also brings higher level thinking into the assignment.

WebQuest Rubric

The WebQuest I have chosen is Evaluation of Government Systems. I feel it does a good job of meeting high standards for a quality WebQuest. Click here for the completed WebQuest Rubric for this lesson.

WebQuests Worksheet

Your Role

___Efficiency Expert

___Affiliator

___Altitudinist

_X_Technophile

Your Impressions

WebQuest	Strengths	Weaknesses
Gorillas	Good external links and images were well sized.	Teacher pages were not completed. Font color choices did not make sense- (hard to follow on the process page.)
Shakespeare	Very good formatting and information organization. Had many good external links and images. The only site to have completed teacher pages (including images and lnks).	Images used are very small.
Earthquake	Easy to follow formatting. Good color choices.	no multimedia on the teacher page.(plain)
Foreign Country	Using maps was a good idea for the topic.	Teacher pages were not completed. Same images used over and over. Font color made everything seem jumbled together. Very few links. Weak formatting.
Waves & Sound	Good use of images to match content. Good use of external links.	Teacher pages were not completed. Font was small and hard to read.

As a group, we felt the two strongest WebQuests were Shakespeare and Foreign Country. We agreed a few tweaks needed to be made for a unanimous decision.  The Shakespeare one needs to have less assignments required, perhaps by assigning certain tasks to certain groups or giving students the choice of certain tasks.  The Foreign Country one needs to incorporate collaboration and better web formatting.  If these easy fixes are made, we feel they will be the best lesson opportunities because they are comprehensive and encourage collaboration, creativity, and self discovery.
We felt that Eathquakes and Gorillas were just "okay" projects.  They both met good learning criteria, but were plain, boring, and needed a lot of work to make students inspired and engaged. The websites reflected this mediocrity.
We unanimously agreed that the Waves and Sound project was the worst.  It felt very rigid, as if it were copied from an old standard textbook.  It did not inspire students or engage them in creative or technological ways, and the website reflected this.

Storybird Project

A Storybird project allows students to
create and illustrate stories using digital media.




A Storybird Project could help teachers address:
ISTE NETS-T Standard 3 for Model Digital Age Work and Learning: 
B. collaborate with students, peers, parents, and community members using digital tools and resources to support student success and innovation.

Storybird is unique because it and provides an avenue of innovation that promotes student success in not only language arts, but in digital media fluency and critical thinking.

Students are given several choices of pre-made digital images to illustrate their story which makes compiling a complete book easier, while still fostering creativity.This may allow students to feel less overwhelmed at the thought of making their own book since the tools available to them are easy to use.

Also, since the project is entirely online, multiple users can contribute to the project. If students are allowed to work together they can feed off of each other's ideas, promoting peer collaboration.

If granted access, parents, members of the community, or the general public can view the stories created by the students.This digital format allows adults to be a part of the students' success and enjoy their creativity in a way that may not be available when doing traditional classroom assignments.
These aspects of Storybird  are important for several reasons. Students should increasingly be made fluent in technology and collaboration to mimic the changing face of the modern networking workplace. "Recently state and national policy leaders have begun to call for a greater emphasis on teaching students in K-12 schools about teaming and collaboration. The rationale for this new direction is two-fold, to increase and deepen learning, and to prepare students to be collaborative team members in work environments that are increasingly dependent on virtual, online collaborations," (Cisco Systems, 2009).
Also, by utilizing resources that are not confined to the classroom, students can collaborate more effectively by working on projects at home with more time to compile their project in a satisfying and successful way.
"Technology can add the flexibility of time and space as students collaborate with anyone at any time and place......In addition to convenience, there is emerging evidence that computer supported collaborative learning benefits students in the development of higher order thinking skills, student satisfaction, and increased productivity.," (Cisco Systems, 2009).

I feel that Storybird is one of many wonderful tools that can allow students greater success in the modern workplace. Now, instead of throwing students into the workplace upon graduation with no networking or technological experience, they will be equipped with the tools to be successful, because that is how they will have been learning over the course of their school years.

References:
Cisco Systems. (2009). Technology enhanced collaborative learning. Retrieved from https://docs.google.com/document/d/11VN6R_yz4zPWMTWuNyrxB5oXwQsLrUcXkAnHI_sHDlA/edit

(Video)
Cavanaugh, K. (Performer) (2010, March 02). Using storybird.com. Palm Breeze Cafe. [Video podcast]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ad6svo2ndD8