Chris Toy was a presenter at our school’s annual BTG conference. He presented on digital storytelling. What’s digital storytelling? View this video and then continue to read my notes on his presentation below.
Title: The First Pedagogy and the 21st Century
Why tell a story?
Goals for this session:
Model sharing of stories
Reflect on why digital storytelling is engaging to an audience
Transfer activities to classroom practice
Change and Leadership: How will you prepare yourself and your school for the 21st century? “You must be the change you see want to see in the world.” (Gandhi) – What do you want from a child? What situations will you put your students in? What choices will you offer your students? How will you empower your students? What sustenance will you provide?
Digital Storytelling is a rich and deep teaching medium
If you had to use a story in your classroom in the next month, how would you adapt it to your use? This is the most challenging aspect for teachers.
Teachers need to make it relevant to themselves and their students
An intro video example on digital storytelling from this Educational Uses of Digital Storiessite
Students become more engaged and learning is more meaningful – ask them to interact within curriculum – Students will become the curriculum
Another form of storytelling is music (ex. Billy Joel “We Didn’t Start the Fire”- social comment from 1949-1989)
Example story of “How Paul Bunyan became a Champion” (photos taken from Creative Commons)
(C.Toy always stops before the end of the story and asks the audience to predict the ending in pairs – He then asks a reflection question related to the story)
Point of View story example from elementary students on The 3 Little Pigs (example was a narrated photo slideshow – some stop motion animation applied with photos – some YouTube examples here)
What are some things or practices that are made of straw, sticks and bricks in our classrooms and schools? (Reflection question related to story)
Musical Stories are another possibility: Social studies example
How might you use music to reach and teach more students?
Chris Toy then concluded with some stories about student work regarding problem/project/challenged based learning
What can you share about your school’s initiatives through Digital Storytelling?
Poetry and the Parable: Blind Man & Elephant example using simply Keynote style
Go here if you need further info regarding the use of video in the classroom. The site offers student examples, lesson ideas and rubrics. I also have some film and video lesson ideashere on my wiki too that may be of interest. But the mother of all ideas may come from Alan Levine’s 50+ Web 2.0 Ways To Tell a Story.
My school hosts a yearly educational conference called “Bridging the Gap” (Nov. 19-21), which is open to all staff and parents. Several teachers from the local area will be presenting as well as Kim Cofino. Now in it’s 8th year, the school has also included unconferences and BarCamps. The theme this year is on education and technology with an emphasis on, What does 21st century education look like? I’m not sure if it looks like anything, but I do know that processes and ways to present sure have changed.
I’ll be presenting on essential 2.0 tools for teachers and students. I had a very long list and managed to narrow it down to about 15. I was speaking to some teachers though and was surprised to hear that some still do not know what RSS is, see the relevancy of blogs or even know they can create their own wiki. There still seems to be some divide. I may need to revisit this list so as not to info-whelm everyone and cater to some of those entry-level teachers. (Hey, at least they are showing up to learn. That’s the first step.) Once done, I’ll post all the resources here. If you feel you have a kicker of a resource/essential app tool, please do drop me a line to share.
UPDATE: My list now has 25 essential tools. I thought I should include some more basic stuff for the beginners.
We are about 2 months into school now. I don’t know about you, but I am BUSY. Swamped actually. Every year seems to grow and get busier and busier. More stuff gets added but it feels like not much is taken out. With this, I ponder if I continue to challenge my students out of their comfort zone in Art. Are they challenging themselves or simply giving me what I want for assessment purposes? Do I encourage them to experiment enough or do I rush them?
I was flipping through some bookmarked videos and stumbled across this one again (video below). Not fully related to what I am writing but it made me wonder if I am understanding my students. I can’t remember who passed it on to me, so apologies. It’s in Japanese with Korean and English subtitles. Some food for thought.
Stimulating Imagination Through Constraints is an interesting article from Psychology Today. As a specialist teacher who often visited classrooms in the past, I have seen several teachers simply ask their students to “be creative” or “use your imagination” for project tasks. Too bad it’s not that simple. Students will not usually know where to start. Nor would I.
In the classroom we need to be ‘clear and explicit about definitions, concepts and processes.’ Being creative does not simply mean to create something with no limits in mind. Usually such an open task will lead to more frustration and poorer quality of work. How will you then evaluate when all was simply asked was to be creative and imaginative? Providing some constraints can help define the problem and assist in solving the problem in creative ways.
(Read the full article through the link provided above).
Media literacy skills have been important for decades as the news media transitioned into entertainment and a few international corporations consolidated control over information. While media literacy was important in the 1960s, it was sorely neglected. It may be even more crucial today but remains unattended by many school programs.
Digital Images for Education is “an unrivalled online image library, comprising over 500 hours of film and 56,000 photos, will be available free of charge for at least 25 years to UK higher and further education institutions from Summer 2010.”
Since a new school year is upon us, Edutopia recently posted this. Click the link for more in-depth explanations and exampels. A brief and quick summary is below.
10 Rules of Engagement
1. Start Class with a Mind Warm-Up
2. Use Movement to get Kids Focused
3. Teach Students how to Collaborate Before Expecting Success
4. Use Quickwrites When You Want Quiet Time and Student Reflection
5. Run a Tight Ship When Giving Instructions
6. Use a Fairness Cup to Keep Students Thinking
7. Use Signaling to Allow Everyone to Answer Your Question
8. Use Minimal-Supervision Tasks to Squeeze Dead Time out of Regular Routines
9. Mix up Your Teaching Styles
10. Create Teamwork Tactics That Emphasize Accountability
Stimulating Imagination Through Constraints
