7 Elements of Digital Story-Telling

Digital story-telling is based on the idea of combining the art of telling stories with a variety of digital multimedia, such as images, audio, and video. Most digital stories include some combination of digital graphics, text, recorded audio narration, video, and music to offer information on a particular theme. Digital story-telling is a powerful tool which can be used in your classroom to enhance the learning environment for your students. There are seven main elements of digital story-telling, which are important to its overall success in the classroom. If you implement these elements into your digital story-telling lessons, then your are bound to have positive results. The seven elements of digital story-telling are outlined below:

1. Point of View: What is the author trying to say? From whose perspective is the story being told?
2. A Dramatic Question: A dramatic question is one that will be answered by the end of the story. This dramatic question leads to a resolution which may be predictable or may be a surprise.
3. Emotional Content: Serious issues that speak to us in a personal and powerful way due to emotional paradigms such as love, loneliness, or death/loss.
4. The Gift of Your Voice: A way to personalize the story in order to help the audience understand the context. This is a powerful tool that tells who you are and sets the mood for listening.
5. The Power of the Soundtrack: This includes music or other sounds that support the storyline. The soundtrack is used to set the mood for your story.
6. Economy: Basically this means, using just enough content to tell the story without overloading the viewer with too much information. Therefore, the story-teller needs to choose key points and let the audience fill in the patterns.
7. Pacing: Pacing is related to economy, but specifically deals with how slowly or quickly the story progresses. Pacing is the secret to successful story-telling.

The project plan and storyboard, which I have created for my digital story-telling movie technololgy integrated plan, certainly incorporates these vital seven elements of digital story-telling. In fact, these seven elements are the basic outline for my project plan and storyboard. My project plan and storyboard both have a strong point of view, and include a dramatic question, which is answered by the end of the lesson. I made sure to incorporate emotional content into my project plan/storyboard as well, in order to draw my audience in and keep their attention. Also, I made sure to incoporate the "gift of my voice" and the "power of a soundtrack" into my project plan/storyboard. These are elements of digital story-telling that allowed me to personalize the story while supporting the storyline. In addition, I made sure to keep the "economy" element in mind to ensure that I provided my audience with just enough content to tell the story but not an overload of information. This is another vital element of my project plan/storyboard because it allowed me to focus on the main points and let the audience fill in the patterns. Last but not least, my project plan/storyboard was created with "pacing" in mind. Pacing deals with how slowly or quickly the story progresses and it is the secret to successful story-telling. If you want to learn more about my digital story-telling movie project, then check out the Storyboard. You can also check out my Google Document which provides more specific information regarding my digital story-telling movie technology-integrated plan.

Ms. Itschner's Communication Voice Thread

Here is my voice thread created for second grade students. Enjoy!!!

Multicurricular-Integration: Slide Share/Slide Cast &Voice Thread

Slide Share/Slide Cast and Voice Thread all are wonderful tools which can be integrated into daily lessons in the classroom. These tools are interactive and they motivate your students to learn and participate. I have found all three of these tools to be especially relevant to my communication theme. Slide Share is a wonderful and easy tool to use in the classroom with your students. I would use Slide Share specifically in the classroom for my communication theme to present students with short stories which they would read and then retell with the use of the microphone. This is a wonderful way to enhance the student's ability to communicate through retelling or summarizing a spoken message. I would also integrate Social Studies into this lesson by providing a non-fiction text on Thanksgiving for the students to read and then retell with the aid of pictures. Voice Thread is another wonderful tool that is easy and accessible for teachers and students to use. I would specifically use Voice Thread in the classroom for my communication unit because it is a tool designed for having conversations around media. This would be a wonderful tool to use for my mission of promoting communication skills in young children. Another great quality of the Voice Thread tool is that it offers the ability for others to comment on the side of the Voice Thread. This gives a great opportunity for your students to receive feedback and comments from their peers and their teacher. Overall, both of these tools are wonderful way to integrate multi-curricular lessons in your classroom.

I can envision Slide Share/Slide Cast and Voice Thread also being useful tools for me to utilize in the future. These three tools can be used for much more than just my communication unit at hand. They can be implemented across all of the curricular areas. The Slide Cast Tool would be a great way to incorporate more audio, such as music or spoken words, because of its mp3 capabilities. I can envision using this tool in the future to incorporate books on tape for the students to listen to while following along with the pictures. For older students, I would also like to use Slide Cast to integrate a Science lesson over topics such as the water cycle. The students could create there own Slide Casts or Slide Shares with images of the water cycle and their voices explaining the process. Voice Thread is another wonderful tool that would be useful in the future for multicurricular-integration lessons. I can envision using Voice Threads to really get the students interacting and excited about what they are doing. Voice Thread allows the students to collaborate with one another and comment on each others work. The power of collaboration is a great learning tool to introduce to your students as early as possible. It is important for your students to know that they can learn and benefit from one another. All of these tools are easy to sign up for, easy to use, and they greatly contribute to your students confidence and learning capabilities. With these tools, the possibilities are endless.

If you want to know more: Check out my "Slide Share Technology Integrated Plan"

Theories Used Behind Digital Story-Telling

Digital story-telling is a wonderful tool for technology integration in your classroom. There are a few different variations of digital story-telling in which you can utilize with your students; Slide Share, Slide Cast, and Voice Thread. All three of these digital story-telling tools are fun and interactive ways to get your students excited about learning and motivated to do so. Teachers who are able to turn emerging technology, such as the technology mentioned above, into tools for students' thinking, are referred to as Alchemists. The definition of an alchemist is a person who joins unconnected ideas to create new ideas and unique ways of doing things. With powerful technological tools such as digital story-telling, you too can become an "Alchemist" in your classroom. To learn more about these tools you can talk to other teachers, search the Internet for extensive information, or read other teacher's blogs or wiki pages for new ideas. Learning from one another is a vital key to our overall success.

There are many different ways to utilize different digital story-telling tools in the classroom. Place-based story-telling is one effective way to use digital story-telling interactively in the classroom. Place-based story-telling is a form of digital story-telling that combines digital mapping tools with the power of a narrative. (Place-based story-telling has been used with older students, but can be modified for younger students as well.) This is a great tool that can be incorporated to enhance your students' learning capabilities. There are many theories behind digital story-telling which suggest that this is an effective strategy to use with your students in the classroom. It allows students to be interactive and gives them motivation to learn. If your students are excited about what they are doing, then they will be learning at the same time, without even knowing it! Also, digital story-telling gives your students an international audience, which validates their work and gives them a purpose. Through the use of digital story-telling in your classroom you are bound to involve and excite your students about the learning process. Give it a try!

Internet Resources

There are a variety of internet resources out there which are available for us as teachers. The possibilities are endless when it comes to the many different ways in which these tools can be utilized in the classroom. Our students will benefit greatly from being exposed to different forms of internet resources such as kid-friendly search engines, email projects, VoIPs (Voice Over Internet Protocols), chat/IM services, blogs, wikis, and online collaborative resources. All of these resources provide students with an opportunity to expand their horizons and their communication and technology skills. I can specifically envision using these internet resources in my unit plan on communication.

Kid-friendly search engines provide your students with a safe and protected environment in which they can openly search for information. This internet resource is a wonderful tool which will open up many doors for your students. I would specifically use these kid friendly search engines during my unit plan on communication to teach my students search syntax as a web search strategy. Teaching the student to use certain vocabulary and syntax will help them narrow down their search results and this will reinforce accurate communication on the student's part. Here are some examples of kid-friendly search engines: Awesome Library, Kids Click!, and Kid's Search Tools. In addition, as a teacher you have the ability to create your own student search page. This is another wonderful tool which you can access through Google. This gives you the ability to customize a search engine for you students to use on a specific assignment.

Email Projects would be another great internet resource to utilize during my communication unit. There are many resources for email projects but two in particular stick out in my mind and would fit perfectly into my unit plan on communication. First, I would love to incorporate Gaggle.Net into my unit plan. Gaggle.Net provides safe and controlled email accounts for students and teachers to communicate through. This would be a great way to introduce the students to a form of online communication and explain the convenience and power of such online tools. Another email project resource that I would incorporate into my communication unit would be Class Connect. This internet resource provides students with the capability of communicating and interacting online with other students in classrooms around the world. What an amazing tool for communication to introduce students to at an early age.

VoIPs (Voice Over Internet Protocols) and chat/instant messaging services are some other examples of internet resources that can support communication in the classroom. VoIPs are internet resources that can turn a standard internet connection into a way to place phone calls, send instant messages or text messages, and in some cases share files. Chat/instant messaging services provides a fun and interactive way for students to communicate online and learn more about how technology can benefit them as individuals. The most appropriate form of these internet resources mentioned above, in which to incorporate into my communication unit, would be the chat services of EPals. EPals offers students a student chat forum where they can communicate with one another, among many other things. This would be a great resource to use because it would encourage the students to use the vocabulary and language development they are learning to communicate with one another online.

A blog is another powerful example of an internet resource that can be utilized in the classroom to promote communication. A blog is a websie usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Blogs allow anyone to share news and be their own reporter and publisher often for free. They give everyone an audience for their own kind of news about school, family, and so on. Blogs would be a great internet resource to incorporate in my unit plan on communication because it would give the students an audience which would validate their work. This is a huge motivator for students to communicate clearly in the work that they choose to post on their blogs.

The last form of an internet resource that I would like to weave into my unit plan on communication would be that of online collaboration. A great example of an online collaboration resource is GoogleDocs. GoogleDocs is a wonderful collaboration tool that, with proper instruction, can be used by students of all ages. This internet resource will allow your students to collaborate on a project over the internet, and have the ability to communicate online concerning their project. This is a tool that your students can use and benefit from for the rest of their lives.

In conclusion, there are a variety of internet resources that you can use in your classroom to enhance your students' learning. The particular internet resources that I have mentioned above have been specifically chosen for my unit plan on communication. There are many other internet resources out there that can improve the learning environment that you can create for your students. Kid-friendly search engines, email projects, VoIPs, chat/IM services, blogs, and online collaboration resources are all interactive tools which can be used in the classroom to enhance communication skills through the use of the internet. I strongly believe that these are powerful resource that we should tap into as teachers.

For more information concerning these internet resources you can visit my works cited document for my unit plan.

How to Use Blogs in the Classroom

As a teacher, a blog can be a wonderful teaching tool to use in the classroom. The process of creating a blog not only extends the walls of the classroom, it also gives your students a voice and an audience which validates their work. Blogs are great resources for communication and information literacy skills and they serve as a wonderful tool for reflection on learning. In addition, the audience for your students' blogs can by anyone in the entire world. A classroom of second grade students in China can make posts and comments on your classroom's blogs here in Texas. What a neat experience to provide your students with through their web blogs. These intercultural exchanges may be a once in a lifetime experience for some of these children. Blogs are used in the classroom for communication, literacy, sharing, collaboration, interaction, discussion, participation, engagement, excitement, conversation, expression, and reflection. The benefits of the blogging experience will enhance your students knowledge and skills.

There are many different ways in which you could utilize a blog in the classroom. For example, you could have your students create a personal blog in which they would post certain pieces of work from the current school year, kind of like a portfolio. This blog would serve as a reflection of what the students learned that year. Also, it will provide a fun and interactive technological experience for your students to add to their background knowledge or schema. Also, you could create a classroom blog for a specific science experiment that your students have conducted. This blog would include the step by step process of the experiment and any observations or results that the students recorded. This would be a fun activity for your students to participate in, and it would allow them the ability to refer back to this experiment and receive feedback. There are many possibilities for using blogs in the classroom. Some middle school teachers even use blogs to post upcoming assignments, schedules, and news for their students. Anyway that you implement the use of blogs in your classroom will prove to be a fruitful experience for your students. Be creative and get your students active in "blogging to learn".

To learn more about educational and classroom blogs visit David Warlick's website.

Essential and Unit Questions: Communication Unit

I have created an essential question and three unit questions which all relate to my theme on communication. These questions are the framework for my unit. My essential question is; How are listening, speaking, and communication vital for your educational experience? This particular question meets the constructs of an essential question because, most importantly, it introduces a lasting idea that provides a bridge between several subjects. Communication is important in all content areas and in the real world. Listening, speaking, and communication are all skills that are necessary to learn early in life. Also, this question meets the constructs of Essential Questions, because there can be more than just one answer to this question. It depends on how you value communication as an individual and what communicating can do for you.

My unit questions are narrowed down from the essential question. My unit questions are; How can you use vocabulary to describe your feelings, ideas, or experiences? How can you retell a spoken message by summarizing or clarifying? How can you support spoken messages using appropriate props such as pictures, charts, or objects? These three questions meet the constructs of unit questions because they are open-ended and they invite exploration of ideas that are specific to a particular topic. These questions serve as discussion starters that support the essential question above. Also, they will engage students in critical thinking, promote curiosity, and develop a questioning approach to the curriculum. These three unit questions will encourage exploration and will provoke interest within the students.

Inquiry and Project Based Learning Contribute to Communication Unit

I am doing a unit on communication and have found that inquiry and project based learning are great approaches to utilize during this unit. You will be seeing some posts of sample projects for my unit on communication here on Ms. Itschner's "Blog to Learn". Inquiry and project based learning are both crucial instructional methods that are designed to promote a productive learning atmosphere, where individuals are enthusiastic about what they are involved with and learning. Both inquiry based learning and project based learning require a great deal of communication in order for the outcome to prove effective.

During the inquiry process, your students are basically gathering information through hands on experience and through listening or questioning. This style of teaching and learning is a process which encourages seeking information and aggressive questioning. In addition, inquiry is an important part of multiple-intelligence work, and cooperative and collaborative learning is inherently inquiry-based. As you can see, communication is necessary during the inquiry process in order for it to be effective. Project-based learning is an instructional approach which is built upon authentic learning activities which engage students' interest and in turn their motivation. This style of learning is generally performed by groups of students who are working together towards a specific goal. Project based learning teaching students communication and presentation skills, and therefore is a perfect instructional method for my unit on communication. As you can see, both of these instructional methods tie in beautifully with my unit theme of communication.