I explored many elements within Digital Storytelling and found some great ideas. A bit of background... I teach specials to K-5 students. I have 20 55 minute classes with K, 1, and 2 students once a week and 12 55 minute classes with 3, 4, 5 students once a week. We do a major research project with all grade levels at some point during the year and I like to give a few options for final research projects. In the past, we have used Wixie, PPT, or videos as options. I don't have a ton of time to teach many tools to students so I have debated having student experts on certain tools do the teaching but I don't know if there is time for that. I am always looking for tools that student's can quickly pick up without needing a lot of assistance from me. THE GOOD: I loved using Adobe Spark. I found it very easy to use and user friendly. I would feel comfortable using it as an option for students during their research projects. I made two reading posters with Adobe Spark. I didn't see how to embed the file so I uploaded it below. I'm not sure if multiple students would be able to use my account at one time. I definitely don't want students to have to create their own account. Microsoft Sway was also a hit with me because we are an Office365 school. That means that students would not need an account which I love. It's a nice option other than PowerPoint. We have an upcoming countries research project so I made an example. https://sway.com/CXvZOFFC79W6zcGy?ref=Link THE BAD: I played around with Photos for Class which is a cool tool to use for finding images. We tend to teach our students how to find images in Google and cite them but this is a nice option as well. I didn't love that you had to download the photo though because that is another step of importing the photo into whatever it is students are working on. I attempted to use Teachnology's timeline and while I loved that you did not need to log in, it did not have enough overall features for me to want to use with students. I would choose a different timeline option. I also tried TimelineJS but that linked to Google accounts which we do not have. I loved the idea of using Sharalike but had issues creating an account. I liked that it was marketed as simple with not as many options as others but I can't attest to any of this because it had an error every time I tried to make an account. I looked at Exposure but it looked a bit too complicated for elementary students on the time limit that I have with them. THE UGLY: I often stand in my own way when thinking of what students are capable of. I am trying to let go of control and I hope that if I can offer different products, students will choose what they want to use and they will also take the effort to learn whatever tool they choose. Perhaps after student's choose what they want their final product to be, I can group them so they are sitting next to each other and can help each other. I am fortunate that I generally teach the same material each year so I can continue to adapt lessons to best suit my students needs or never teach them that way again! ;)
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1/4/2018 04:21:29 pm
Love the Ireland project and the 2 adobe spark posters. You have a great eye for design. Nice work taking advantage of this time to work through a bunch of options to figure out what might work for your younger students. And great plan to give them some choice, the bunch them together to support each other. I've done that with teacher workshops too.
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AuthorDebbie Nobles - elementary librarian and avid reader. ArchivesCategories |