Part of the Handout
Engaging reluctant writers is essential. Utilizing technology, such as digital storytelling, within writing projects can hook some reluctant writers. Students can utilize writing skills in digital storytelling via narration, dialogue, scene setting, story core, story mapping, scripting and storyboarding as well as visual portraits of stories. The creation of a unique video is itself a form of writing. Working in writing teams encourages differentiation and active participation by all.
In my demonstration, students created a short (2-5 minute) video demonstrating appropriate social interactions. They followed the steps below, but were encouraged to adapt these directions to their interests/experience.
1. Break into groups and choose roles such as producer, narrator, actors, script writers,
storyboard author, oral storyteller(s)
2. Use one of the suggested scenarios or create your own.
3. Discuss how you want your character(s) to solve their problem or to use pro-social skills to improve their lot in life.
4. Have one or two members tell the story to the team and revise as needed.
5. Create a storyboard for your video.
6. Tape your video following your storyboard.
7. Make a quick iMovie.
My talented classmates created marvelous videos. These were planned, taped and created in iMovie within 40 minutes. Jason Ohler noted in his book, Digitial Storytelling in the Classroom, that the rough creation of digital stories takes about 20% of the time for the project and the last 80% is polishing. Depending on the purpose, he advocates less polishing in a classroom setting in order to provide more practice with the actual digital story making.
Reflection on my Demonstration
In planning for my demonstration lesson, I was not lacking for ideas. I wanted to integrate social/emotional learning skills in some manner utilizing technology skills. Charlie, my very patient and wise coach, guided me to the ReadWriteThink lessons plans on the NCTE web site. Lessons on bullying, setting up classroom expectations, building classroom community through poetry, and using comparing and contrasting skills to interpret themes of liberation and racism in texts all peaked my interest. However, I was also reading Digital Storytelling in the Classroom by Jason Ohler and was hooked. I really wanted to present a lesson on making digital stories related to social skills. Charlie helped keep me on track as I had initially spent way too much time on researching and getting resources for social/emotional learning skills. I really wanted to make the point that, like writing and technology, social skills permeate everything at school and therefore need to be directly addressed throughout the curriculum. I needed to remember that this was first and foremost a literacy lesson. So I decided to create a lesson to teach students how to quickly create a digital story… specifically on social skills. I regularly use video taping with some students, but had never considered having them write the script, choose the action, devise the scene, and tape it themselves. There was a wealth of storyboard examples on the internet and no two were quite the same, although there were basic similarities. I chose three samples to demonstrate how storyboards can be used and also found parts of two commercially made DVDs showing students using appropriate social skills to solve problems in order to give my peers examples of videos, albeit professionally made ones. As previously mentioned, I had my “students” choose a challenging social situation for which they could model appropriate social skills, decide just how to handle this situation, come up with a group consensus on how to create the video, produce a storyboard, tape the video, and download it onto iMovie, all within forty minutes. My talented classmates exceeded my expectations for creativity and invention. It was great fun as well as an important learning experience.
The written responses to my demonstration included good points and some interesting suggestions. They all agreed that this would likely be quite motivating for students with a potential high degree of engagement. Possible drawbacks frequently mentioned, as well as discussed at the end of the demonstration, were time and experience with technology. In an actual school environment, it would be important to have some students experienced in videotaping and downloading. We talked about training a student cadre of technicians to help with the technology part. In my social work setting, I have many older students who would enjoy this and who could benefit from this “expert” role. I would likely do the training over lunch periods which could also be fun for these students. I would like to eventually expand the number of expert students. And my hunch is that this will come a lot easier to our digital native students than it did for us digital immigrant teachers. As was emphasized, a polished look was not the goal for this video. Getting a quick rough “first draft” was the goal – not adding sound, voice-over, and other fun, but time-consuming trappings. Unlike how independently our “students” in this demonstration worked, students at my elementary school would require longer time and more guidance and assistance during each step. And the reality is that the taping would only be done in my or another teacher’s presence.
My peers commented that this type of activity could be used across other subject areas – history, science, math… They also noted that students need to use social skills in order to collaborate to create this video on social skills and that social/emotional skills are needed across the curriculum throughout the day. By having students create this type of short video, they experience working as a team, compromising, and taking each others’ perspective. Additionally, they practice describing, role playing and acting out appropriate social skills. By “teaching” these social skills for others to view, hopefully students will “own” these skills. Social/emotional standards (Develop self-awareness and self-management skills to achieve school and life success. Use social-awareness and interpersonal skills to establish and maintain positive relationships. Demonstrate decision-making skills and responsible behaviors in personal, school, and community contexts.) are important life skills that are vital in school and in the future workplace. This project addressed writing, technology and social/emotional standards.
