Digital Storytelling, a yes!

Doing this digital storytelling was very fun and got me in the creative mood. I wrote a short-quick few sentences story on going to the Britney Spears concert with my friend. I used pictures that we took while we were there and also added some captions to the slides. I had to do this for another class of mine, I am going to post that video on my blog as well. It was for my TE 401 class and we worked in groups doing something called a digital storyboard. We went to the Michigan Historical Museum and had to take pictures on a certain topic. My groups topic was transportation. So we had to make a digital storyboard using pictures of different kinds of transportation and how it had developed over the years. We had a lot of fun making that video as well. I believe that this is a great tool for teachers to use with their students. It for one is a great way to get students involved with technology and become hands on with a subject within school. I learned a lot about transportation in Michigan simply by doing this assignment because you had to work on it and know the information. There are many things that teachers could do with this. Including projects and assessments. It allows students to take a part in creating the lesson. If this were to be done in an elementary school classroom the students could be put into groups and then share their videos with the class. Allowing all students to learn different topics but be masters at one topic. These types of things allow students to also feel very good about themselves. It brings out the creative side of you and makes you the "director." You decide how you want the storytelling to go, what music or audio you want to use, and what pictures or videos you want to use. I liked the medium I used, it was called Slide. I liked it, it was very easy to put the pictures up and add text. The only thing that I did not like about it was that I could not add music or audio. It was a silent storytelling. I don't find anything wrong with this, it is just a different way of doing it. Although sometimes adding music and audio is a great way to get students attention if they are bored by just the pictures and text. I looked at a few of the other sites as well and found that each one was different. A few of them I could not add text to, but I could add music, or vice versa. I think it is almost easier to make these digital storyboards on a computer-type program. Such as i-movie. I have a lot of experience with i-movie and that program is easiest for me to make a digital story. Using pictures, music, voice recording and text. Although the ones that we looked at through the workshop were very helpful as well. I find that this would be a great tool to use for students as an assignment and they would really enjoy it and get a lot out of it. I did as a future teacher and would be very willing to implement this option in one of my lessons.