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Creative Strategies for Reading Authentic Texts in Other Languages

I googled Chicago, violencia, and pandillas to find an article to tie to the third page of text from a picture book for Spanish II. La llaman América is about a little girl who immigrated to Chicago from Mexico and her experiences in her home, school, and neighborhood. As authentic texts go, it is a unique perspective but, frankly, awkwardly translated from English. Still, there are enough angles to capture teenagers' attention, and inner-city or neighborhood violence is one of them.

Integrating digital storytelling with instruction becomes a creative opportunity for both novice and technologically experienced educators when using Jason Ohler's Digital Storytelling in the Classroom. Ohler links digital storytelling to improving traditional, digital, and media literacy, and guides teachers on how to empower students to tell stories in their own native language: new media and multimedia. Aligned with NCTE standards and covering important copyright and fair use information, this text provides information on integrating storytelling into curriculum design and using the principles of storytelling as a measurement of learning and literacies. Implementation tips and visual aids abound, giving teachers an exciting new resource.

Storytelling is an age-old art form. With Web 2.0 and the tools already available on most computers, students can use text, music, sound effects, videos, and more to create a multimedia presentation that links them to the world beyond the classroom. Storytelling has the potential to unleash creativity, engage, and motivate. Applicable across the curriculum, digital storytelling teaches students to work collaboratively and use new technologies, skills they will be required to have in the workforce of the future. This book offers an overview of digital storytelling as well as its variations, including e-portfolios, digital photo essays, and scrapblogs. The many recommendations, overviews, and explanations of digital storytelling tools, along with lists of additional digital storytelling resources, will help educators to apply this exciting technology in their classrooms. Educators will also discover the ways digital storytelling can be used for their own professional development. Digital Storytelling Guide for Educators provides detailed directions to preparation, production, and presentation, and rounds out with a discussion on creating rubrics and evaluating student work. Readers will come away with an understanding of digital stories and the tools needed to create them.