Digital Storytelling in K-12 Classrooms
I'm looking forward to all of the Digital Storytelling options at SITE - Thanks to Glen and others! Digital Storytelling has become an integral part to my undergraduate/graduate courses in reading and technology. However, my real interest is then the next step - how do these students take Digital Storytelling inito their own K-12 classrooms. One of my graduate students, Stacy (now teaching in Aurora, IL), designed an action research project around Digital Storytelling with a 7th grade language arts teacher. Stacy developed the curriculum and then, she and the teacher worked with 70- 7th grade students (working in groups) to develop digital stories. Orginally, the focus for the digital stories was human rights issues and how these issues relate to families, but that focus shifted for the study group to Everyone Has a Story to Tell and We Will Help You Tell It. The entire unit was aligned with the classroom's literacy standards and benchmarks and assessments were developed to gather these results. Topics students chose to address were very personal - Adoption, Hemangioma, Kids and Drugs, Tourettes, Bone Cancer, etc. I think you'll find the project interesting (especially Stacy's reflection piece) and invite you to browse it - Digital Storytelling in Middle School Classrooms.
I'm happy to report the 7th grade teacher is implementing the Digital Storytelling project again this year, even without the support of Stacy! Last year during a focus group session one student commented, "Writing a story you are just saying it. You don't have any pictures to go along with it. And if you have the iMovie you can see it and add music to go along with it. It is kinda like you have a book and then you have a pop-up book that is more intersting." The insights into Digital Storytelling from the perspective of a 7th grade student!
Denise Schmidt
posted by Dr. S @ 6:58 AM
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4 Comments:
Wow! This is a phenomenal resource site on digital storytelling, Denise, the best I have seen to date! I especially like the curriculum elements, including lots of details and examples on preproduction, production, presentation and assessment. Many thanks to Stacy for compiling and sharing this. The lit review is also excellent.
A minor suggestion: Stacy may want to share these resources with an explicit Creative Commons license to let everyone know how they can use these resources. Bernajean’s Porter’s DigiTales: The Art of Telling Digital Stories is also a good resource with a similar organization, although she uses 7 phases.
I echo the "Wow" that Wesley used in his comments about Stacy Behmer's digital storytelling with Middle School Students website. It really does an excellent job of bringing together all of the various components that make DS such a valuable tool in education. I will definitely share this with my students and colleagues and hope we can use this exciting project as a model in our own work.
I also think it’s fascinating to see how quickly students and educators are moving beyond the glitzy aspects of the technology and focusing on the STORY in digital storytelling. I believe that this is a strong confirmation of what so many of us have been saying about the power of technology when it becomes transparent. And I look forward to hearing about the experiences of others, especially from those who are just beginning to use digital storytelling in their instruction.
Stacy has done a fabulous job and the website is wonderful. I really like it's organization as well as the information.
Denise,
What I like most about your work is the reflection component. It gives preservice teachers the opportunity to reflect upon their work, and how digital stories might be used with students.
I belive that, as teacher educators, this is a responsibility we must address. It's simply not enough to have preservice teaches produce good digital stories; but we must find a way to have them reflect upon this work as potential pedagodical tools.
Your work presents a good step in that direction.
Mike
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