Digital stories

In the spirit of including ICT and creating challenging and engaging assessments for my students I have created an excellent task for my year 8 Literacy class (if I do say so myself!) We have been studying the film Wall-e and I have gone throough with them the various film techniques and terminology and we have explored and broken down the meaning and messages of the film and how the film depicts these. So I wanted my students to take it the next step and have a deeper understanding of how films promote messages to the audience. So I set them the task of creating a Digital story. This allows students to impliment the concepts of filmic techniques and the creation of meaning in their films through narrative, character, music and action. The students were excited and engaged and came up with lots of creative ideas. By having students also create storyboards I was also able to scaffols students learning as they made their thinking visable.

DIGITAL STORYTELLING – BASIC STEPS

A digital story is a 2-3 minute multimedia movie that combines photographs, video, animation, sound, music, text and often narrative voice.

• How would you present the issue of the environment/global warming/pollution in a creative film to encourage people to help?

• Write a piece about this subject (at least a page)

• Read the page aloud to yourself or to each other.  Does it sound right?  Does it flow?  Too short?  Make appropriate adjustments.

• Create a Storyboard.  This helps to match the words of your story with the relevant images.  Break up your story into parts and think about what image would go best with what words.    

• (Optional) Record the story on the computer using AUDACITY – This can then imported to Movie Maker or PhotoStory.  Using AUDACITY produces a cleaner recording and is easier to edit if you fumble the lines.  Alternatively, you can record the story directly into Movie Make or PhotoStory3. 

• Put the story together using Windows MovieMaker or PhotoStory3.  In general, PhotoStory3 is an easier program to use, but you may feel more comfortable using Moviemaker.

• Import your photos and place them in the correct sequence, add transitions and titles.

• Import the Audio from audacity or record the story directly into the program.

• Save as a Media Player File.

Example of how Webspiration classroom can be used to Teach in English

Inspiration

I recently had the opportunity to attend a PD on the software program Inspiration. I thought it was an exciting new way of allowing students to make their thinking visable using ICT. Inspiration allows students to make mindmaps and graphic organisers. It is fairly easy to use and can allow for "rapid fire" writing that organises the writing as you type so that you don't have to pause but can just get everything down first. I felt this was helpful as I am one of those people that needs to get everything out quickly befor I forget and fix it up later. You are able to use symbols and colours to visually organise information and group them how you want. It also create for you a written organiser that sets out what is in the visual presentation in an additional written hierachy. This allows both the written and visual parts to be compined to create a better understanding of the concepts. This would be an excelent tool for starting a topic and having students brainstorm or to revise on the connections and information on a topic studied. I also found that a new product called webspiration classroom allows students to have accounts where they and the teacher log on and can invite others to comment or give feedback as they work so that they can use it for drafting.  Students can even collaborate live with a chat function that allows them to discuss and see changes as they happen. This is a new tool that I am excited to try out in my classroom to see how the students will respond to it. I think it will be very helpful in engaging students with the concepts and making their thinking visable.

Showing examples of film techniques

I used this clip in  class after a discussion of the different types of film techniques and after we discussed how different techniques are used to convey meaning and emotions. It lead to a really insightful converstantion into how film create emotion. A great clip.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1japIhKU9I

Qwizdom

Today I experienced a new and exciting ICT tool Qwizdom! It is a program and set of contollers that allow any test to become and super cool who wants to be a millionaire tv quiz show! Year 9 students took over my year 8 Inquiry class today as part of their assessment is to teach a group of students about an environmental topic. A large part of the year 9's mark comes from their ability to draft and revise this lesson and improve. My class was the first practice run. One group of boys decided the best way to assess the effectivness of their powerpoint and speech (both of which needed quite a lot of work!) was to do a qwizdom to see how well the class understood. Well the assessment was fun and engaing and allowed students to buzz in their answers on their controller, which then recorded and displayed the statistics of students who got the answers correct and incorrect. Although the lesson may not have been as successful as possible, I was given a great idea for making assessment fun and informative. Who knew that students could love having a test? Next time I yell Pop quiz! maybe I will get a cheer?