Planning to Make a Movie Using Digital Storytelling

In my digital storytelling movie which I will be making from the perspective of a student, I will be explaining the importance of numbers in subjects such as history and will be talking about what life would be like without numbers. In order to make a good movie, I will be incorporating the 7 Elements of Digital Storytelling: point of view, dramatic question, emotional content, gift of your voice, power of the soundtrack, economy and pacing.

It will be obvious through my movie that I believe numbers are extremely important and that we could not live without them; that is my point of view. At the beginning of the movie, I ask the question: What would the world be like if numbers did not exist? and answer it continuously throughout the presentation. The emotional content is involved when talking about birthdays and how we would never get to experience them if it were not for numbers. In order to use the gift of my voice, I will make sure to pause at the appropriate times for dramatic effect and enunciate clearly. For the soundtrack, I will be playing the instrumental version of the song 100 Years by Five for Fighting throughout my entire movie. The song flows at a good pace and is also highly appropriate because it talks about how we only have 100 years to live and how they go by quickly.

My movie contains five examples of the importance of numbers in my own life and history so there is not too much information to overload my audience and just enough to inform them: this means the economy is good. Along with this, I will move at a slow enough pace that my audience can understand what I am trying to convey, but not so slow that they will become bored. All of my plans are extensively laid out in my storyboard and my specific unit questions and lesson plan which I will be using for this digital storytelling activity are described as well.

Digital Storytelling

Below is my SlideShare presentation of how I would teach my students the importance of numbers. Digital Storytelling is a new and fun way for teachers to teach and interact with their students. Although this method may take a long time getting used to, it is something that can help inspire children to learn even when they don't know they're learning. Especially in today's age, kids love technology and spend most of their free time using it; whether this involves video games, computers, televisions or cell phones. Even if a student is sitting in a classroom watching an informational slideshow, they can realte that to when they are at home watching a movie and will enjoy learning. Digital Storytelling can be used in various ways by teachers. They can be thought-provoking, where students need to interact with the SlideShare and answer questions or they can even be something that the students helped create as a class project. My favorite example that I found on the web of using a SlideCast (the same thing as a SlideShare, but with audio) was a classroom's project for mother's day. Each kindergartener drew a picture of their mom and then whenever their picture appeared during the slideshow, their voice could be heard, listing all the reasons that they loved their mom. This example proves that even the youngest children can use and be excited about technology for learning purposes.

VoiceThread, SlideCasts and SlideShares are all technological tools that I could use to help me with my unit plan on the importance of numbers. They are all slightly different; for example, SlideCasts are simply SlideShares with sound linked to them. As displayed below, I have already used a SlideShare to help teach my students a lesson on numbers and how they are not just used in mathematics. I would love to make a SlideCast with my class after they viewed my presentation. Each student can come up with their own personal example of where they use numbers in their everyday lives. They can all draw a picture of their idea and record a voice clip explaining their picture and where they see numbers everyday. After everyone finished their own masterpiece, we could create one big classroom SlideCast of all of our ideas about numbers.

These digital storytelling tools are things that I would love to use in my future as a second-grade teacher. I think they are perfect for fun holiday activities. If I choose to only use SlideCasts and VoiceThreads for special occassions, children will begin to view technology in the classroom as a special treat and will learn start looking forward to working with it instead of dreading it beacuse of its difficulty. I love the Mother's Day idea that was previously stated and I think it would be great to incorporate this same skill into other holidays such as Christmas or even President's Day. For Christmas, my students could make their own technological wish list that could be sent out to the parents. This slidecast could have a picture that each of the students drew of the present they want and their voice asking Santa for that present. For President's Day, we could do a history lesson about the presidents. Each child could be assigned a different one and would have a chance to reasearch and learn more about who they were assigned. After everyone has all their information and has recorded their part of the VoiceThread, we can listen to and watch it as a class to learn about all the presidents that the other students researched.

These are only a few of my ideas for using digital storytelling in the classroom. I'm sure as technology advances, there will be even more tools for us as teachers to implement into our teaching.

Slideshare Presentation that I Could use with my Students

Check out this SlideShare Presentation:

The Importance of Numbers

View more presentations from bethillia.

Here is the works cited for my slideshare presentation, explaining where I found the materials necessary to create it.

Internet Resources

In today's technologically sufficient world, students as young as elementary school are challenged to use the internet as a resource for their research and learning process. My works cited has given a long list of different means that can be used to help teachers teach students about the importance of numbers in the classroom. Blinkx.com was a helpful video site that allowed me to find serveral videos on how to teach my students the importance of numbers in subjects other than math. My favorite site that I think would be extemely effective in the classroom was google.com/coop. This site allows teachers to create their own customized search engine for their students. It not only gives freedom to younger students who are not quite as qualified to find reputable sources on their own, but it also saves much time that a child might waste searching through thousands of articles on a topic. Through this customized search engine, students can search key words and come across sites that the teacher has designated for their students.

In my classroom, I could use this method while we are doing a history study and making timelines to teach the children the importance of numbers even in social studies. I could add importat sites that give the dates of crucial occurances in history that I want the kids to learn. From this information, students can take notes and then create their own chronological timeline from the dates that they gathered. Even when students are not right next to each other, they can use instant messaging to communicate and collaborate across the classroom without disturbing anyone else on sites such as Yahoo Messenger and Google Chat. VoIP or Voice over Internet Protocol would also be a great way for students to work collaboratively even from home. It is just like being on the phone with the person, except through your computer and without those pesky long distance charges. This way, students can do their work from home and still get constructive feedback.

Overall, the internet is a great tool for students to find resources, no matter what their age. Even younger second-graders who I would like to teach can learn how to use a customized search engine to glean information. The web is now a place for people of all ages.

Using Technology in Education

Times are changing, meaning that children today are more technologically advanced than generations before them. Many kids spend their down time playing video games, surfing the net, or logging onto online personalized sites such as Myspace and Facebook. Because of this, I believe that it is essential to incorporate technology into teaching at every age group.

In David Warlick's blog entitled 2 Cents Worth, he speaks about how even if a child doesn't have a love for doing their schoolwork, technology can still be used effectively as a teaching strategy in his post, More on what Matters.... Blogging is a variation of something that most students do on a daily basis. They talk to friends via instant messaging, text messaging, and many other avenues; blogs are just another venue in which students can interact. Even if it is schoolwork, children can view the relationship that it has to their daily lives which makes this more exciting.

Even though Warlick is speaking about high-school-aged kids in his post, I believe that the same will apply for the younger age groups. When I was in elementary school, I was hardly using computers at all in my social life. In today's world, there are special sites made just for kids where even the young ones can play games and interact such as Disney and Club Penguin. Students will immediately be able to see similarities between the conversations they have online with their friends and the discussions they have in the classroom about their posts. Because of this, blogging can be used for almost any activity in school, especially when it comes to language arts. If a class is reading a book, students can create their own blog and write down their daily thoughts about what they read. This way, their peers can comment on their thoughts and talk about how their ideas differ. Not only will this increase literacy, but it will give students a fun way to stay organized, discuss topics in an educated manner, and give them a sense of ownership when they create a blog that is a space created completely for themselves.

Introduction: Welcome to my blog

Why are numbers important? This is an essential question that I will plan on asking my students continually throughout their studies. We can answer this question in almost every area of learning by answering more specific unit questions. For example, if we are doing a language arts lesson, we can ask: How can I find a page number I am looking for in my book? This will help students realize that without numbers, it would take a lot longer to locate a desired page in their reading. Other questions revealing the importance of numbers that can be asked come in both history and math lessons: How do I know when something happened in history and How can I show someone what number I am talking about without holding up that many fingers?

In order to help my students answer these essential and unit questions, it is necessary to use both inquiry and project-based learning. Sometimes it will be easiest for me as the teacher to demonstrate certain unit questions which would make students learn through inquiry. I could show the children where page numbers can be found in a book and how to use a table of contents and then they can try this skill themselves, asking as many questions as they need to. Project-based learning is also crucial when figuring out the essential question of why numbers are important. When dealing with the history question of dealing with when something happened in the past, students can do a timeline project. They will be able to work with other students to create a large timeline of important dates in history, learning how to organize them in chronological order. Although very different in theory, both inquiry and project-based learning are great tools to use when teaching students how to answer question effectively.