Group items tagged

This is a teacher friendly site on the process needed to take to create a digital story in the classroom. It has tutorials and a plethora of resources.

This site provides a plethora of webtools where you want to visually tell a story. I like how the tools are categorized based on what or how you want to present your story. It also provides a table of contents to link you to the tool which makes navigating around all of these tools not so overwhelming.

Scholastic BookFlix is a new interactive online literacy resource for Grades PreK-3 that pairs fictional video storybooks from Weston Woods with classic nonfiction eBooks from Scholastic. While reading and stories have been around for centuries, the availability of having videos and books read aloud through the computer is a more modern creation. Book Flix is a subscription based site through Scholastic, featuring many popular children's literature in a variety of subjects. Each subject provides the student with a video based on a book, and another which is read aloud page by page. This site fits into the category of technology centered, where Mayer (2009) acknowledged technology often drives the method of instruction. Students in my classroom enjoyed being able to view and hear their favorite books providing the auditory and visual learners more opportunity to enjoy the story.

Amimoids 3D has a free one month download. This software allows individuals to create cartoon movies of stories they want to share. It is effective because students can effectively tell their story using media technology.

This particular multimedia example is a video about the greenhouse effect, and its title is an engaging aspect that attracts learner by referencing a commonly known children's story. Mayer described the technology centered approach as being based in how and what technologies can be incorporated into the learning process (Mayer, 2009, pp. 10-11). It is definitely technology centered first and foremost. Throughout the video, it uses a great deal of overlaying video with static images or content so that the eye is engaged and drawn into the movement happening on screen. In this case, it meets with Mayer's assumption of dual coding in its design, in that it operates both on an auditory and visual channel (p. 64). In this case, in order for the learner to construct knowledge the auditory channel is the most important because the video images themselves really just augment the commentary, rather than presenting identical content visually. The images are stunning; there are amazing 3-D representations of earth, and video of the first atomic explosion. While these images are captivating, they don't serve as a second representation of the content itself. The learning that takes would not be considered active learning by Mayer's criteria, because there it is not structured in such a way that the learner does not have any repetitive elements to select and focus on in order to sequence the content in order to build knowledge (p. 71). Also, there is not an opportunity for the learner to integrate the visual and audio components to build knowledge, because the content is primarily in the audio while the video images are more oriented toward holding the learner's attention instead of presenting content or concept related information (p. 71).

Showbeyond http://www.showbeyond.com Showbeyond is a resource that I came across while I was teaching my journalism students how to create a photo essay. Even though I just randomly stumbled across this resource it has proven to be a wonderfully simple to use slide cast program. Slide casts are an online multimedia format that combines and synchronizes slideshows with podcasts. I have found this format perfect for online story telling as well as online presentations. I think Showbeyond is a resource more fit for middle and high school students and educators. Showbeyond allows students and educators to design and create multimedia presentations easily and quickly. Showbeyond is a resource that lets you select and manipulate photos and text to create a visual presentation which you can add podcasts, music, and videos to. I chose Showbeyond because I don't think you can find a more accessible multimedia to create simple presentations on. I say simple because Showbeyond is not capable of some the more advanced features such as animation and timed slides like PowerPoint and MovieMaker are capable of. However, I do use Showbeyond in my classroom often and my students really enjoy the products that they can create.

This site from the University of Houston offers a very good guide to Digital Storytelling. Links to resources, tutorials, examples, articles and products make it a very complete resource collection and a must for any serious classroom producer.

This website provides an overview to digital storytelling as well as essential areas in include, was to create digital stories, was to evaluate them, examples, lists of possible software, and most importantly an extensive background in copyright.

Site examines basic principles/terminology of digital storytelling, current practices, research, innovations within the field, and a user discussion forum.

Interactive site that provides a diverse range of examples of various forms of media used in digital storytelling and an examination of the practice in terms of current research into its effectiveness.

This is an additional site on digital story making. While it contains great information it can be more difficult to navigate and keep track of important information. Users should be conscious of where they find valuable information. 

Quibblo is a website that allows the user to create quizzes, surveys, polls, and stories. It is free and easy to set up. Quizzes can be shared by email or embedded into blogs, facebook, twitter, myspace, and wikis. Pre-training allows prior knowledge to move into the working memory of the individual. This stimulates essential learning by anticipating the concepts that are coming as well as accessing prior knowledge.

Useful site that gives overview of digital storytelling process, including some powerful examples. The site is generative in that it prompts the reader to apply the learning with some quality story prompts. It breaks the process into 10 basic steps, and it includes storyboard samples, needed hardware/software, publishing tips, and more.

Short how-to video explaining how to use VoiceThread for Education. This video specifically explains how to record audio narration in a digital story in VoiceThread.

Short how-to video explaining how to use VoiceThread for Education. This video specifically explains how to upload media to a digital story in VoiceThread.

Quizilla is useful for essential and generative learning. It allows users to create quizzes, poems, stories, games, and other creative artifacts for posting online. The resource can be used for organizing ideas in the form of checkpoint quizzes or for demonstration understanding through more creative forms of knowledge demonstration such as poems, games, etc. I chose this site because it offered a wide range of choices.

Reading stories for each week have great tools online to increase comprehension. Online instruction includes: Meet the Author/Illustrator, Literacy Lessons, Research and Inquiry Activities, Language Activities, and Vocabulary/Spelling Activities.