This is my first year teaching Middle School Technology using the MYP Design Cycle. It is a rather thorough and demanding programme, both in terms of student work, teaching and evaluating. However, I understand and agree with the goals of the programme and how the focus is on process over product.

Recently my grade 7 class just completed their unit on digital stories. Our significant concept was, “We can communicate our stories in many different ways.” Our unit question was, “How can we use media to communicate our stories?”

I’ll save myself the trouble of summarising the unit on this post. If interested, you can view what we did weekly for about 12 weeks here. Of course, I will be making some necessary changes and improvements to the structure and delivery of the unit, as well as some refinements to the evaluation.

What I would like to do, is showcase some of the efforts these clever 12 and 13 year olds have done. These “stories” were rather flexible in their definition, with some students creating fiction, documentaries and instructional videos. They had only three weeks to actually create the product and some were very successful. To clarify this, some “unsuccessful” efforts were also successful (and probably more direct and efficient) in teaching what is needed to create a piece of work. This is an aspect of the MYP that I like. Some of the applications ranged from iMovie, to Powerpoint/Keynote to VoiceThread, Doozla, Blender, FinalCut and Adobe Flash.

The first one here impresses me. It is a hand drawn comic that was imported into Prezi in order to pan across the panels, which was then screen recorded. Next it was imported into iMovie for further editing. Did I mention this was completed in 3 weeks? I like the mixture between digital and analogue.

The Stone of the Future from Marina Mitsumata on Vimeo.

The next one on “How to Eat an Apple” uses time lapse/stop-motion photography and is filmed with excellent lighting, simply by placing the apple in a plastic container!

How to: Eat an Apple from Connor Harrington on Vimeo.

The next one is a hand drawn animation that has a great scene around the 1min.30sec. mark. Check it out!

Finally, this last one on “How to Eat Toast” is rather silly and humorous. Have a look.

There are several others I can show, but this post would run on forever. If you’d like to see some student reflection/evaluation examples, check out these two here and here. Feel free to leave some of these students comments directly on the video sites.

“The epic life of a world-class artist, jammed into six minutes and narrated by Tom Waits.”
I’ll be doing a digital storytelling unit with grade 7s next year. This video may be one of my examples. Love it!
Commissioned by LACMA for their first annual “Art + Film Gala” honoring John Baldessari and Clint Eastwood.

Today in our final COETAIL face-to-face workshop for module three on visual literacy, we (Kim Cofino and I) assigned a task to teachers.

First, teachers were to individually find a Creative Commons image that inspired them. They did this by searching through Creative Commons, Color Lab, or through Google Advanced Image Search. Next, in groups of 5, they were to upload their images to a shared presentation. Google Presentations were used for this. Groups were asked to arrange the pictures in an order to create a shared story, which they then presented. After each group presented, groups were also asked to add one slide each to a whole-class shared presentation, which “risk-takers” volunteered to tell for a made-on-the-spot “Presentation Ping-Pong” story.

I’ve done variations of this activity from kindergarten to high school, from being a classroom teacher, to being an art and drama teacher. It’s light-hearted and fun. Some ideas to use/alter it for, could be as…

• an alternative way to introduce creative commons
• a way to introduce shared presentations
• a story writing prompt (be it on paper or digitally)
• as a way to introduce presenting without text (or at least to present without reading)
• as a way to show the power of visualisation
• as a way to show how pictures with and without text can be interpreted differently
• to use it backwards (what pictures could match your text?)
• to build creative/critical thinking

An interesting aspect that came out of the teacher discussion was how it could be used as a good ice-breaker activity for students/teachers to use at the beginning of the school year to get to know each other well. This kind of surprised me, but it does make sense. You can learn a bit about someone by the pictures they choose. If you haven’t tried this sort of activity, give it a try with your students, or your colleagues. If you have other ideas for the potential of this idea, drop them in the comments section as I’d love to hear from you!

“ZooBurst is a digital storytelling tool that is designed to let anyone easily create their own customized 3D pop-up books. Using ZooBurst, storytellers of any age can create their own rich worlds in which their stories can come to life.”

I can see elementary students loving this. The Zooburst team also state that “In the very near future we will be releasing a “class management” feature inside ZooBurst that will allow teachers to set up classes, create assignments and set up usernames & passwords for your students. In the interim you can always log into ZooBurst on behalf of your students. ZooBurst will allow you to access your account from multiple computers at the same time, so if you are in a computer lab simply log into the site for each student and have them create their own books.”

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:

1. Model sharing of stories
2. Reflect on why digital storytelling is engaging to an audience
3. 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 Stories site
• 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)
• Business student parody “We Didn’t Start the Crisis”
• 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
• He used these videos: Elem example, HS example
• 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 ideas here 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.

10 Killer Content Sources for Your iPod Learning Mix (via Mission To Learn)

Improve Your Browsing Sessions with SuggestRSS (via WebAppStorm)

More Challenges with Wikis: 4 ways to move students from passive to active (via The Journal)

Have a look at Matthew Needleman’s Video In The Classroom (Digital Storytelling in the Elementary Grades and Beyond) site to view student films, film techniques, tutorials, tips and rubrics.

A Missing Piece in the Economic Stimulus: Hobbling Arts Hobbles Innovation - an excellent article on why art education matters and how it leads to innovations in other areas. (from Psychology Today via Journeys in Art)

The 3 Best Sites To Read Manga Online (via Daniel Pink on Twitter)

From the web:

Back to School: 10 Terrific Web Apps for Teachers (via Mashable)

Aardvark: Need a fast answer from someone who knows what they’re talking about? Aardvark discovers the perfect person to help with any question in minutes.

Storybird: Collaborative storytelling for families and friends

TuxPaint is a free drawing program for children ages 3 to 12 (for example, key stages 1 and 2). It combines an easy-to-use interface, fun sound effects, and an encouraging cartoon mascot who guides children as they use the program.

ToonDo

Tomas Nilsson created this interpretation of Little Red Riding Hood for a school assignment. (That’s all I really know)

Slagsmålsklubben – Sponsored by destiny from Tomas Nilsson on Vimeo.

I couldn’t help it. I know I am on holiday. I promised myself not to use a computer. Having drafts available was just too tempting.

Here are some articles that may be of interest.

Data Visualization Is Reinventing Online Storytelling
Today’s consumer seems to have an insatiable appetite for information, but until recently making sense of all of that raw data was too daunting for most. Enter the new “visual scientists” who are turning bits and bytes of data — once purely the domain of mathematicians and coders — into stories for our digital age. 

Is Facebook Growing Up Too Fast?

Wikipedia: Exploring Fact City
“Contributors to Wikipedia have wondered aloud lately if — perish the thought — they are running out of topics.”

And have a look at SearchCube. It is a “…visual search engine that presents web search results in a unique, three-dimensional cube interface. It shows previews of up to ninety-six websites, videos and images.”

Lurid.com has an all-new series with acclaimed illustrator P. Craig Russell discussing graphic storytelling and sequential art. In the debut installment, he looks at the opening page of his comics adaptation of Pelléas & Mélisande. Check back for a new segment every Monday!

There is also a lesson plan here from the Apple Learning Interchange site on retelling stories.

It is described as:

When students retell a book, their words are captured in Comic Life. In a guided reading group setting I want students to be able to reflect on and see their retell in a tangible way. Typing the retell words a child says into a Comic Life document helps them see their thoughts and reflect on them. It gives the teacher the opportunity to revisit what they said, to notice their strengths in the retell and point out and train the student in the areas where they are weaker. The Comic Life retell is sent home with the student so the child’s parent can be informed of the retell skills their child focused on that day and to continue practicing those skills at home.

I use ComicLife all the time with my elementary students. Have a look. There is more to do than the above.