Digital Storytelling In My Classroom

I have been reading and investigating digital storytelling as a resource for teaching in an online course and am very excited about what I am learning. When I first started researching, most of what I found seemed geared toward elementary education - with kids animating books that they have read or creating their own stories to practice their writing skills. I struggled at first to see how this would translate to a college level information technology course. A little more investigation helped me to see that it could be a useful tool. I could use it to create content when I can't find what I am looking for and I can have the students use the tools to demonstrate what they have learned. Below are a few of the things that I have learned or tried or plan to try with regards to digital storytelling.

Using Digital Storytelling to Enhance My Lectures

This is a tool that really got my creative juices flowing. Because I was more than halfway into the semester I didn't get much of a chance to try it out, but one of the assignments in the Emerging Technologies class that I am taking required me to make a public service announcement about Digital Footprints and it seemed like a perfect opportunity to try out Animoto, one of the digital storytelling tools that I had discovered. The video that I created is below and it tied in quite nicely to my unit on Social Media.

Digital Footprint Video

Using Digital Storytelling in on Online Environment

I also had to create a note card story for my Foundations in Distance Learning course. The purpose was to look at critiques of distance learning and analyze them to come up with solutions. My story tells the tale of two students - one who had a poor online learning experience and one who had a good one. It tells the story with the perspective of the teacher as the point of view, however my research into digital storytelling has me inspired to rework it so that I can use it in my online course. It would give my online students a better understanding of what they need to do to be successful. I will add that video to this blog once it has been created, but in the meantime, the one that inspired it is below. It was created using Screen-cast-matic.

A Tale of Two Students Video

Below is the Tale of Two students video updated for use in my online course. I am testing it for the first time this semester - we shall see if it makes a difference

A Tale of Two Students to use for Students instead of Teachers

A Great Example of Digital Storytelling

I feel like there is endless potential for digital storytelling in the classroom if one has the time and energy to put into creating it. These videos are just my beginner's attempt at using digital storytelling. I stumbled across a web page today that is a wonderful example of the full potential of digital storytelling. It is an interactive web page called the Parable of the Polygons and it teaches about society in a very entertaining and interactive way.

A Brain Dump of Tools that I Discovered and Ideas that I Have for Them

As I was researching for this blog I came across several websites that I or my students might be able to use as tools for digital story telling. The first is Animoto which allows you to create videos by inserting pictures and setting them to music. It is how I created my Digital Footprint video and could be used for many other topics as well. I haven't come up with a project for my class that would use this video yet, but I plan to keep stewing on it because I think that it is something that my students would enjoy.

Another tool that I came across in my research was a sight called Jog the Web. It is a sight that lets you compile a series of web site links and add comments to them. The way that I anticipate using this site is not traditional storytelling, but one of the topics that we explore in my course is how to maintain a computer. I have the students create a maintenance manual that they can use to maintain the computer that they use for their college courses. Lately the results for this project have been very disappointing. I feel like Jog the Web may be a tool that I can use to help with this. I have two ideas for this site. The first is a rework of an assignment that we already do, which involves analyzing web sites to see if they would make a quality source for a research project. I could send the students to the websites through Jog the Web and use the comments section to give them instructions on what to do once they get there. The other idea is to have each student create a Jog the Web of the sources that they think they might use for their project. They can add comments for each page explaining why they think it is a valid source. This might make the assignment more manageable and easier to grade.

The last storytelling tool that I am considering right now is screencast-o-matic. It is a screen capture tool that I am already using to provide video feedback for my online students. What I envision is a more tech version of a digital story. Instead of typing up how to perform maintenance tasks, the students would create a video manual. They can demonstrate how to perform a task and explain to my why and how often to do it. Again, it might make it easier for the student to be more successful with this assignment.

I am sure that I will come up with plenty of other ideas for using these tools now that I am aware of them. I am very excited for the potential that they offer for my courses.