Digital Story

What? In class we learned how to create digital stories using Photo Story. We learned how to create music for the story or insert a song from somewhere else. We also learned how to edit the pictures we insert.

So What? I thought it was really fun learning how to make Digital Stories. I think this project will be really fun and helpful to me. I think it would be fun to create Digital Stories when doing a presentation instead of just going through a Power Point. With the Digital Story I can create it how I want it and only share photos and images that I want to share. If I just show a YouTube video, I could spend a long time looking for videos that match up to what I would like to share and still not find a video exactly the way I want it. If I create my own Digital Story, I can make it exactly how I want it.

I think it would be very helpful to use during Field Experience. It would be an interesting and different way to change up how I am teaching the students and get them excited about a topic. For example, if I was going to teach the Civil War, I could create a Digital Story with pictures and interesting facts and stories from the war and that time period. This would help get the kids interested emotionally and take interest in the Civil War before I even start teaching about it. I could also use it after I've taught them the unit just as an overview and refresher on all that they have learned.

Now What? I could use Digital Stories when I am a teacher in a lot of the same ways as I would use them in field. I could create a Digital Story about a topic I will be teaching as a way to get them interested in what they will be learning. I could get the students thinking about the topic and thinking about higher level thinking questions rather than just about the facts. I could have them write a journal entry about their feelings and questions and their responses to questions that were asked in the Digital Story.

Digital Stories are a good way to make a topic that may seem boring to a child become interesting and more real. Using pictures and music together is a powerful way to invoke emotions in the viewer and help them to make real world connections to the information instead of just reading random facts from a text book. By using lots of pictures in the Digital Stories I create students will be able to easier visual things that they might not have had experience with. For example, if I was teaching about the Civil War, showing pictures would help them visualize that time period, the way people dressed, weapons and uniforms, what homes looked like, etc. If children haven't had any experience with those things, it's hard for them to visualize another place or time.

Video: I thought the NASA digital story was interesting to me, but I think students would find it kind of boring and I don't think they would pay attention. I think it would be better than just lecturing to them because they have the visual images to go with what they are hearing, but I don't think they would find the information interesting because of the way it was presented. I think by using more interesting music and a better narration would make students more interested in learning about outer space.