Task+6+Digital+Storytelling+Tools

====How would you define **Digital Storytelling **? Take a minute to think about what it might mean. It has become an important part of writing for many students and there are literally scores of web sites that are designed to allow kids to write digitally. Here's a great introduction. media type="youtube" key="zP6CeGLPuOY" height="515" width="650"====

====One of the very first and easiest to use Digital Storytelling tools I used is called Animoto. It is a very easy to use resource. At its easiest level, it is a slideshow with music created by others. It can be made more personal by recording your own student voices to go along with this but that's pretty complicated. You can find it at [|Animoto for Teachers]. Go ahead and view the video there and look at the case studies. Teachers get something else that costs for free and it's super. We know a way that teachers whose students don't have email accounts can access it using their teachers gmail account (another reason we had you create the gmail accounts.). A new tool for digital storytelling that is very similar but lets you add text is [|Flixtime]. Here is a[| link from Free Technology] for Teachers that gives you more information. Note that you could use Flickr images or others from Creative Commons, your own pictures, pictures from places like [|NASA] many other places for making these digital stories. Animoto's free version lets you make 30 second videos but the teacher edition lets you make them of unlimited length. One of my bookmarks from Diigo today included this site. It looks to be a nice mix between Animoto and allows you to record your audio with your slides online. Check it out at [|Showbeyond].====

====T[|his site has resources and links to tutorials] for most of the digital storytelling tools out here. ==== ====For high school students, digital storytelling is not only for English but can be a powerful tool in other subject areas as well. I would be remiss if I did not talk about Discovery Learning here. The teacher would have to download the videos and share them with the students but many of those videos can be edited. I can see you, Carmen or Kem, downloading a video and removing the narration that is there and having the students add the narrative for a history or biology topic. ====

====Most of these resources are more useful for project work for older students. While younger students can certainly make movies, the possibilities where students have depth of content seem more suited to older students. Movie making falls into this category and many schools and teachers use movie making as a part of class projects that make content come alive for their students. You may have heard that teaching someone is one of the most powerful ways to "make learning stick" and with cell phone cameras and inexpensive video cameras, it's something worth exploring. All divisions have sets of digital movie cameras so lack of equipment is not a problem for us. Some of the best tools for digital storytelling are not necessarily Web 2.0 tools; PhotoStory is a prime example. It is easy to use and has great possibilities in any subject area. It has been replaced by Windows Live Movie Maker. It has many of the same feature of PhotoStory and is a Web 2.0 tool in some sense. You can use still pictures or video in it. Here is one tutorial media type="custom" key="6501125" ==== ====Here is an example of a Canterbury Tale rendered for a high school English project. You can also search YouTube for projects such as this.media type="youtube" key="4KjLWTWJ--o" height="241" width="300" ====

The last tool is only for the over 13 set. It says it very clearly on their website and I can find no way to overcome that.
====That site is [|XtraNormal.]Some of the stuff you can find there is not suitable for younger than 13 to view. Here's a set of ideas about [|XtraNormal that you mig]ht want to check out. Students pick characters and then type in the text for them to say. I see this as powerful for language teachers especially. Teaching conversation? Have students create conversations, type them into Xtranormal and design a movie to go with them. Watch some of the movies there that can be remixed. (remix means made over) Here is an exceptionally [|good tutorial] telling you how to use XtraNormal. Try your hand at making a little movie if it is something you might like to use with your students. ==== ====George, you have begun a wiki with your students. For summer reading, it might be a great activity to have them make an XtraNormal or Animoto Video about their book and post it on the wiki to share. The rest of you might want to think about digital storytelling in some form as an alternative to a "traditional assessment" for summer activities. ====

====Although this is not really a web 2.0 tool, [|this site]would be helpful to writing teachers or students who need ideas or help with writing. This[| site is just a writing site as well but]has a plethora of activities, graphic organizers and other tools for writing both on and off line. And I call this a site for reluctant writers. I learned to use the "hot pen method" but this is a new twist--you go [|to the OneWord site]and see a word about which you can write. ====

====The first is a tool called " [|We Tell Stories--Fairy Tales"]. This is a guided writing experience. It would work at several levels and also could be used for a target language. ====

====For the older set, here is another way of putting together digital stories called [|Digital Storytelling Toolkit]. One of my favorites is the [|Myths and Legends Story] site. I think it could be used by grades 4 and above. Or now these folks have added a new [|Story Creator2] option. Take a look at it and see if it is something you might like to use. If it is, email me and I will send you the information. The school has to have a master account and I will be happy to assist you on this. ==== ====New storytelling tools keep cropping up (which makes me believe that this is a powerful tool). That being said, this is not a section for the high school crowd. One is [|Storybird] .This tool can be used collaboratively as well as by one person. I think it would be great for world language learning or some creative storytelling. It is not often that kids get pictures and have to make up a story to go with them. Another tool is [|Storyjumper]. Storyjumper is very new but is adding the ability to publish the stories, according to their website. A more limiting but still useful tool is called __[|My StoryMaker.]__ It is more restricted to the characters and scenes available in its scope but it might be a good place to start your class's adventure. ==== ==== At the ISTE conference last year I learned about a new site for making 3_D stories. My grandson saw it in one of my Technology magazines and wanted to try it. Here is his short attempt. It is not a masterpiece but go ahead and take a look. ====

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====Please go ahead and apply for an account. It is called [|Zooburst] and it allows stories to be made in 3-D. What intrigues me about this is that students could turn on their webcams (which are in all Berkeley Bundles) and put themselves in a story. Features are still being added to this and I encourage those of you who are doing this class for the second time to try something like this. ====

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Another recently discovered tool is something called[| FlipSnack.]
====<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">It is an extremely cool tool for a project such as the second grade did recently. They did research reports with pictures and text. We scanned them into the computer, made them into a PowerPoint and then saved them as a .pdf file. If you don't know the easy and quick way to do both of these tasks, see your technology coordinator or email me so I can show you how. Then we uploaded them to FlipSnack and I embedded them in the second grade blog site. Here [|is an example.]The number of free ones you can make is limited but buying enough for a whole class to use is inexpensive. ==== ====<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Another kind of interesting site for both English and Language teachers is the [|GrabbaBeast] site. You could have your students go there and create a beast and then write a descriptive paragraph or two. The pictures can be downloaded and posted around the room. A really fun thing to do would be post the pictures and the paragraphs separately and have students try to figure out which picture it is based on the descriptive narrative. Or post them on a blog and do the same thing. ==== ====<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">There are many resources for digital storytelling and I don't want to overwhelm you. If you want more, I have an extensive collection in my Diigo bookmarks that you are welcome to explore. Just click on your Diigo button on the far left of the Diigo toolbar where it says Discover. In the pull-down triangle, you can see Friend's bookmarks; click on mine and go to Digital Storytelling. ====

This image is from http://tars.rollins.edu/it/documentation/docs_video.shtml ====A word of caution. You should have your students plan their movie or digital storytelling project with a [|storyboard]-r It is the step your students will hate doing but it is the way real movie makers do their work and it is also a way to get them into the higher order thinking skills. So make one step of your project turning in a completed storyboard. And these are easy to add as another criterion on your project rubric. Putting all your grading eggs in the end of project basket sometimes is harder to justify since we are working with kids. I always like to have some "checkpoints" along the way for projects like this. You can also [|download storyboard paper here.]====

====<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">I can't finish this without making some attempt at giving you some assessment advice. Since I am not an expert in this area, I am referring you to others. ==== ====<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Here is one site for you to check. [|Jason Ohler] has some good ideas here. (And now a new book if you really get into this). Remember that you need to give feedback as you go along, conference with your students. Have your grading rubric reflect progress, not just the "final" product. We will talk more about the[| rubistar site later but] for now, here are some Digital Storytelling rubrics. Here's one for [|Movie Trailers] that looks very comprehensive. And here is a [|grad school class rubric] for their work. ====