Group items tagged

"Digital storytelling helps students build important 21st century communication skills and make personal connections to the content they are learning. This kit is designed to help you start using this exciting process in your classroom. " Includes articles on digital storytelling, samples, and lesson plans.

These apps help transform the process of sharing and demonstrating knowledge. R. Byrne: "Digital storytelling is a powerful tool in the classroom. It is engaging for students and teachers of all grade levels and can be used across the curriculum. Most of all, digital storytelling gives students a voice and a way of communicating information in an authentic manner. One of the great things about digital stories is that there are no "cookie cutter" answers."

"Digital Storytelling can transform your students' writing into a visual masterpiece that is filled with voice and emotion, while enhancing critical thinking skills. The iPad takes digital storytelling to a new level by making the process easier, and even more engaging for students of all grade levels as well as for their teachers. " Apps and Tutorials for apps look esp. interesting.

An excellent resource that shows how the language teacher can gradually develop skills in storytelling using the right Internet tools in the correct order.

"Few approaches to digital storytelling have been as popular among students as stop motion video. Students can make a high-quality stop-motion animation, or stop-motion video with very simple tools, including Keynote, PowerPoint, Google Slides, iMovie, etc. The basic idea is to take a series of photos that are assembled into a video to show motion. Stop Motion Studio is an app that makes the video creation process incredibly simple, allowing students to keep their primary focus on storytelling. Plus it's free and available for iOS, Android, Mac, and Windows."

This blog entry has everything you ever wanted to know about storytelling: excellent resources and tools are listed, and it would take days and days to explore everything. Nice to have a whole semester's course in one place. The focus is on history as a subject, but the ideas and concepts could apply to any content-based work.

This page also has a definition of digital storytelling and an explanation of why it is important as a learning tool.

A tool to let you pack images together with little marks to show where they "link" on a main photo page. Include text and video. An interesting tool to pack a lot of information behind one significant image for digital storytelling. For iPhone with Android coming soon, as of this writing.

"Creating cartoon avatar of yourself is fun and interesting. You can convert your photos into cartoon effects using free online tools which you can use on your online profiles like Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter and any other place you want." This article suggests almost a dozen online applications to make cartoons out of photos. Find a useful tool for your students to use in digital storytelling.

R. Byrne has a nice article on how and why to use digital storytelling using Narrable or other tools.

"Welcome to DS106, the open online course on digital storytelling that began at the University of Mary Washington and continues as a community of learners across the globe. " Interesting blogs and examples of student collaborative projects.

"The process of creating and publishing videos can be a great way to get students excited about researching, storytelling, and sharing their work with an audience. For teachers who have never facilitated video creation projects in their classrooms, choosing the right style of video and the right tools can be a bit confusing at first. To help bring clarity to the styles and tools, I have a rather simple outline that I use in my video creation workshops. That outline with suggested tools for creating videos in each style is included in the PDF embedded below. You can download the PDF here."

Eventually, schools and colleges are probably going to fall in step with the trend toward digital portfolios as a way to assess applicants. Schools of art, music, and writing are already using them. Give your students a chance to learn this valuable skil.

"In this talk, the presenters, Ozge Karaoglu and Shelly Terrell, will explore the various possibilities of Web 2.0 tools, such as Voicethread, Glogster, Voki, and digital storytelling tools, to engage young language learners. Educators will learn how to effectively collaborate on international classroom projects as the presenters demonstrate the ways their Turkey and Germany lower primary classes connected." Be sure to also check out the site with kids resources: Technology for Kids Website:

You can put a question up on the website and then students reply with their webcam. It's a nice tool for oral language practice, digital storytelling, debates, etc. R. Stannard shows how to use the tool and suggestions for lesson plans. He notes that you will need a fairly fast internet connection.

This is a huge collection of images from the US National Gallery of Art. Nearly all can be downloaded and used for free. Register first and create your own online collection or "lightbox." A magnifying glass icon allows you to enlarge and get more information about the artist, or search for related images. Not just for art classes, the collection would be great for digital story-telling projects and writing prompts.

Tag a place and write a blog post about it, including digital images. Would be create for introducing oneself in an online or blended class. Or use as a geography lesson.

This is an incredibly useful set of tools from R. Byrne. Each of the map/story makers has slightly different features, but they seem to offer great options for students to create their own digital stories. I can envision doing a genetics or migrations story, or plotting out the movements in a novel, for example.

If you are a fanatic of literature, tv shows, or pop culture, this "periodic table" might be a great source of inspiration. Combine the periodic elements into simple story molecules. Students might use these tropes to create their own stories or videos--and learn something about classic literature along the way.

This animation program is purportedly easy to use and Internet safe, also having a blocker for bad words, weapons, and alcohol. No drawing required. A 14-day trial period is probably enough to try it out, but there is a school-license available.