One of the group projects in our tech class was to present on a teaching tool that could potentially be used in our own classrooms. Last week one group talked to us about Digital Storytelling, an application that allows users to upload pictures and create a slideshow while recording audio. The end product is basically a slideshow similar to that in PowerPoint, with your recording playing in the background.
We had a seminar class this past summer, and one group had talked about how planning and teaching lessons was like telling a story, and using Digital Storytelling would be a great way to showcase the visual while creating your own narration to go with it. I have used YouTube videos to show students more difficult concepts in my own teaching, but since it was someone else's video, I couldn't tailor the video narration to suit my students' needs. Students in more advanced classes could skip over some of the introductory information in some videos and go straight to the key concept, while some students may benefit more from hearing the introductory portion as a reminder.
Digital Storytelling wasn't without its problems; we had some issues with adding more stills to our presentation, and other issues with recording and playback. Figuring out the functions of Digital Storytelling took some playing around on the app, but overall I think this would be a good way to make my own videos and narration for my students.
3 comments:
What a great way to look at the digital storytelling as a useful tool in the classroom! I, too, am often skeptical about the use of technology being helpful as a learning tool rather than just a bridge between what the students want to be using and what we want to be teaching. It is often very difficult to reference math when tech presentations are shared with our class. The constant reference to graphing gets old and simplifies my subject content to be only graphs. The ability to use the digital storytelling as a tool to allow a material to be presented at different paces and with differing levels of scaffolding may be the solution to fulfilling many of the unmet needs of a diverse classroom. Great idea!
Thank you for discussing Digital Storytelling. I hope you enjoyed our presentation. I think Voicethread certainly has some advantages. I think it could be especially beneficial for absent students with lecture narrations. Like you said, the program can be a bit buggy and problematic though. But, I’d also say that application takes a bit longer than 30 minutes to figure out fully. Maybe, that’s a problem in and of itself. In any case, hopefully there are updates to fix these problems in the future.
Rachel, I wish I could come up with better math ideas for you. Many of the programs just seem to lend themselves to the humanities. Sadly, I only have time to think on history things.
I think you could use Voicethred to create your own kind of Kahn Academy type PowerPoints for students who need extra examples. Maybe, this gets away from the whole graphing thing.
I too found Digital Storytelling to be an excellent way to create lessons that could be accessible to students outside of class. Often students are absent, other times students are too distracted with all the craziness (friend drama, drama from a previous class, early mornings/lack of sleep) of a high school school day, and finally other times students simply need to receive instruction on a certain concept more than once to fully understand. For these reasons, allowing students to access lessons online via a tool such a Digital Storytelling could be highly effective way to encourage learning on a deep level.
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