Developing Understanding through Digital Storytelling

1. Developing Understanding through Digital Storytelling Jeanette Mikell TECH 345

2. What is digital storytelling? • Digital storytelling is the practice of combining narrative with digital content, including images, sound, and video, to create a short movie, typically with a strong emotional component (Educause Learning Initiative, 2007). • Dynamic media have become an integral part of youth culture (Bull, 2009). • Our goal is to understand the characteristics of dynamic media in the context of that culture and learn how to use these media to achieve learning goals in schools (Bull, 2009).

3. What is digital storytelling? • Creating a digital story taps skills and talents—in art, media production, storytelling, project development, and so on—that might otherwise lie dormant within many students but that will serve them well in school, at work, and in expressing themselves personally (Ohler, 2005). • Most importantly, digital storytelling helps students become active participants rather than passive consumers in a society saturated with media (Ohler, 2005).

4. Rationale: Implications for Education • For digital storytelling to be an important component of … education, it must provide what other tools lack, including an effective integration of technology with learning, an emotional connection to content, and increased ease of sharing content (Educause Learning Initiative, 2007). • Using digital storytelling enhances students' skills in critical thinking, expository writing, and media literacy (Ohler, 2005).

5. Rationale: Implications for Education • Dynamic use of digital sound, images, video, and animation can transform a classroom. (Bull, 2009). • In studies conducted across several content areas and grade levels, including science, mathematics, and social studies, we have found that effective use of dynamic media can lead to increased student engagement (Bull, 2009). • Children love to produce, and teaching them the skills to make good productions takes advantage of their interest and provides them with a wealth of skills (O’neal, 2006).

6. The Essential Questions • How can the use of digital storytelling and dynamic media promote the development of understanding in the classroom? • How can digital storytelling and dynamic media be integrated into the classroom in order to promote understanding? • What are some guiding principles for designing learning activities that incorporate dynamic media? • What tools are available for students and teachers to use in the creation of dynamic media and digital storytelling?

7. Essential Question: Developing Understanding Research (Royer, 2002) shows… • Understanding is a “flexible performance capacity”…the ability to think about the given topic in a flexible manner and to demonstrate that ability through a performance. • Engaging students in developing multimedia projects has the potential to combine constructivist, cooperative, and project-based learning as students develop performances of understanding. • When students have to construct or create multimedia, they are actively constructing representations of their own understanding.

8. Essential Question: Developing Understanding • When kids get to do work that they feel passionate about, kids (and, for that matter, adults) learn more and learn more effectively.—Lawrence Lessig from Remix (Bull, 2009). • [Digital Storytelling is] a learning experience supported and extended by the application of technology, that empowers students to create and contribute, all within the context of what they are expected to know and be able to do in the 21st Century (Jakes, n.d.).

9. Classroom Integration • Communication with digital images and video is increasingly important (McAnear, 2008). • Students must be able to develop and create digital media, use it to communicate, and understand its effect on themselves and society (McAnear, 2008). • If digital stories are going to survive in education, they need to be tied to the curriculum and used to strengthen students' critical thinking, report writing, and media literacy skills (Ohler, 2005).

10. Classroom Integration • Digital video offers new opportunities for teaching science, social studies, mathematics, and English language arts (Bull, 2009).

11. Classroom Integration • Project based learning (Royer, 2002): • increased motivation, problem solving ability, collaboration, and resource management • research skills, organization and representation skills, presentation skills, and reflection skills

12. Bloom’s Taxonomy • Higher Order Thinking Skills incorporated into digital storytelling (Churches, 2008): • Creating • Evaluating • Analyzing • Applying • Understanding

13. Standards Standards Alignment This document from the University of Houston’s Educational Uses of Digital Storytelling outlines how digital storytelling meets nationally accepted standards of learning for technology (ISTE NETS), 21st Century Learner Outcomes, and English Language Arts. (printed handout available) http://digitalstorytelling.coe.uh.edu/alignment.html

14. Standards-21st Century Skills

15. Standards-21st Century Skills

16. Standards-NETS

17. Standards-ELA

18. Standards-ELA

19. Content Areas • Social Studies • As students compose a documentary using historical artifacts, they learn the content, develop their research and primary-source analysis skills, and even come to understand the interpretive nature of historical accounts (Hammond, 2009). • Science • Creation of digital movies can facilitate investigation of a science topic using the students’ social context…They can also stage an event for others to collect data, find patterns, and generate predictions (Park, 2009).

20. Content Areas • Math (Niess, 2009) • Visualization is an important tool in problem solving, and students need multiple visualization opportunities to fully develop this skill. Watching, analyzing, and creating digital videos provide unique opportunities for guiding this development. • [Digital storytelling can] move students from a passive mode of watching to active exploration of mathematical ideas.

21. Content Areas • English Language Arts (Young, 2009) • Digital video is one particularly dynamic technology with compelling implications for the English language arts classroom. • Students learn best when they use multi- literacies to read and compose in new ways. • Integrating visual images with written text, as done in most digital stories and multimodal compositions, enhances and accelerates comprehension.

22. Essential Question: Guiding Principles Digital Storytelling activities should (Ohler, 2005): • focus on the writing process and the story first and the digital medium later • enhance students' skills in critical thinking, expository writing, and media literacy • use story mapping and written and oral storytelling before bringing in digital elements.

23. The Process • Much of the work required to complete an effective digital storytelling experience can be done in a traditional classroom environment (Jakes, n.d.) • The following steps are suggested by David Jakes as a guideline for creating digital stories. • Writing • Script • Storyboard • Locating Multimedia • Creating the digital story • Sharing

24. The Process • Step 1: Writing • In most cases, this writing takes the form of a personal narrative about a particular story from a student’s life. • The most effective digital stories have their genesis in sound writing, so it is important to emphasize the value of multiple drafts. • It is important that the story have a central theme, such as loss or accomplishment, among others. • Story mapping is useful during this stage…[it] enables teachers to quickly assess the strength of a story while it is still in the planning stage and to challenge students to strengthen weak story elements.

25. The Process Important Story Elements • A call to adventure, problem-solution involving transformation, closure (Ohler, 2005) • 1st Person Point of View* • A dramatic question* • Emotional content* • Appropriate voice* • Soundtrack* • Economy* • Pacing* *From Joe Lambert’s Digital Storytelling Cookbook and Glen Bull and Sara Kadjer’sDigital Storytelling in the Classroom (Hodgson, 2005).

26. The Process • Step 2: Script • The script is usually a distillation of the essential components of the narrative story. • It forms the foundation, and the inclusion of the various multimedia elements serve to rebuild the story. • Producing the digital story from the script ensures that the multimedia elements convey and contribute meaning to the story, rather than being included to make the story more “interesting.”

27. The Process • Step 3: Storyboard • Organizes the flow of their movie. • Includes a place for the student to associate their script with a visual (still frame or video). • The storyboarding process permits students to determine or draw the type of imagery that will be associated with a particular portion of the script.

28. The Process • Step 4: Locating Multimedia • Students use search tools …to locate still-frame imagery or video. • Students may also scan images from photographs from personal collections at this point. • Students can create very compelling stories by using still frame imagery.

29. The Process • Step 5: Creating the digital story • Students create their story using the software available to them-iMovie, Windows Movie Maker or Photo Story • The most difficult component is recording the voice (called the voiceover) from the script. • Once the components of the digital story are assembled, students then produce the final movie, a process called rendering.

30. The Process • Step 6: Share • Students are generally intensely proud of their creations. • Showing the digital stories help students understand each other as human beings, and it helps kids to understand that they all share common experiences, and that the person with the blue hair across the room is not that different from them. • Additionally, students have the opportunity to share their stories with a global audience. Unless otherwise noted, all steps are from Capturing Stories, Capturing Lives: an Introduction to Digital Storytelling by David Jakes.

31. Suggested Evaluation for a Digital Story

32. Suggested Evaluation for a Digital Story

33. Essential Question: Available Tools • Software • Story Creation • Windows Movie Maker (PC) • Photo Story • iMovie (MAC) • Image Editing • PhotoShop • Google Picasa • Audio Editing • Audacity • Adobe Audition 2.0

34. Essential Question: Available Tools • Story Playback • Windows Media Player • Real Player • Quick Time • Hardware • Computer • Scanner • Digital Camera • Video Camera • Microphone

35. Web 2.0 and Digital Storytelling • The transformation from analog to digital formats--made Web 2.0, social media, and many other unanticipated consequences possible (Bull, 2009). • Wikipedeia offers a concise definition of Web 2.0 as: “applications that facilitate participatory information sharing, interoperability, user-centered design,and collaboration on the World Wide Web.” • Web 2.0 has given birth to a new participatory culture which allows participants to engage in real-time collaboration and to co-construct solutions to problems (McAnear, 2008).

36. Web 2.0 for Digital Storytelling • Collaborative Opportunities • Blogs • http://kidblog.org/home.php • Wikis • http://www.wikispaces.com/ • Video Sharing • YouTube • SchoolTube • TeacherTube • Social Networking • Twitter • Facebook

37. A Web 2.0 Example: Voice Thread • Voice Thread offers the capability of video sharing, as well as audio files, images, and text documents and the opportunity to hold collaborative conversations around these files. • Participants comment in one of five ways: text, microphone, telephone, webcam, or audio file upload. • Students upload their digital stories to share with classmates, friends, family, and invite comments and discussion. • A unique interactive opportunity • http://voicethread.com/share/2149544/

38. A Library Example • Library Information Science Essential Questions • Why is it important to have a place (the library) where knowledge and information is readily available and shared freely? • Why is it necessary to have organization in the library? • How is the library organized? • How are the books I read connected to my real life experiences? • How can knowing how to locate information be beneficial to me? • How can technology be used to locate information, to help me to learn, and to help me to share what I have learned? • How can I use the information that I find or create responsibly and ethically?

39. How are the books I read connected to my real life experiences?

40. North Myrtle Beach Elementary Student Population • 700 students • Ethnic Makeup • Caucasian: 61% • African-American: 32% • Hispanic: 7% • Special Populations • Free/Reduced Lunch: 68% • Gifted and Talented: 11.5% • Resource, Special Needs, or Speech: 13% • Self-Contained: 3% • ESOL/ELL: 6%

41. NMBE-Classroom Curriculum English Language Arts (as related to digital storytelling) Second and Third Grade: Students will write for a variety of purposes, including personal narratives, descriptive compositions, and pieces to entertain others.

42. NMBE-Classroom Curriculum Science • Second Grade: • Scientific inquiry • Animals • Weather • Properties and changes in matter • Magnetism • Third Grade • Scientific inquiry • Habitats and adaptations • Earth’s materials and changes • Heat and changes in matter • Motion and Sound

43. NMBE-Classroom Curriculum Social Studies • Second Grade • Communities Here and Across the World • Cultural contributions of various peoples in various regions, local community, local government, geographic and political divisions • Third Grade • South Carolina Studies • Places, regions, and human systems, exploration and settlement of South Carolina, South Carolina’s role in the American Revolution and the American Civil War, Major 19th and 20th century developments in South Carolina

44. NMBE-Classroom Curriculum Math • Mathematical Processes • Second and Third: Problem solving, reasoning and proof, communication, connection, representations • Number and operations • Second Grade: Base-ten, place value, addition, and subtraction • Third Grade: Whole numbers, fractions, addition, subtraction, multiplication and division • Algebra • Second Grade: Numeric patterns, qualitative and quantitative change • Third Grade: Numeric patterns, symbols as representations

45. NMBE-Classroom Curriculum • Geometry • Second and Third: Spatial reasoning, basic attributes and classification of three-dimensional shapes. • Measurement • Second Grade: Money, length, weight, time, and temperature • Third Grade: Money, length, time, weight, liquid volume, polygons • Data Analysis and Probability • Second Grade: Collecting and organizing data, trends in a data set, predictions based on data • Third Grade: Organizing, interpreting, analyzing, and making predictions about data, multiple representations, basic probability

46. North Myrtle Beach Elementary 2009-2010 Performance Data Sources: NMBE 2010-2011 School Summary Report http://nmbe.horrycountyschools.net/UserFiles/Servers/Server_1034883/File/Home/NMBE%20School%20Summary%20Report%202010-11%20Final.pdf NMBE 2010 SC Annual School Report Card Summary http://ed.sc.gov/topics/researchandstats/schoolreportcard/2010/elementary/summary/e2601048.pdf

47. North Myrtle Beach Elementary Available Tools for Digital Storytelling • 2 Computer Labs • 2 Mini Laptop Computer Carts • 5-6 Classroom Computers in each classroom • Windows Movie Maker • Library/Computer Lab Scanners • Flip Cam • Digital Camera • Webcam

48. North Myrtle Beach Elementary The Essential Questions • Will digital storytelling improve content understanding in any or all of our student populations at NMBE? • Can the incorporation of digital storytelling into our classroom instruction propel more of our students to the MET and EXEMPLARY categories on PASS testing? • They are both essential questions worth exploring.

49. Important Terms Dynamic Media • Any digital form of media-text, images, audio, or video that has the ability to be revised, re-edited, remixed, and easily posted, uploaded, downloaded, or otherwise shared electronically. • The Mash-Up: http://www.thedaringlibrarian.com/2011/02/digital-remix-mash-up-culture-explained.html • Photo/Video Management and Sharing Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/

50. Important Terms Essential Questions • The starting point, as Grant Wiggins argues, is to "organize courses not around 'answers' but around questions and problems to which 'content' represents answers." Such "essential questions," as they are known, are an important ingredient of curriculum reform • A question which requires the student to develop a plan or course of action. • A question that requires the student to make a decision. • Is it acceptable to clone human beings? Support your decision (Decision making) • What’s the best plan for losing 20 pounds? Your plan can include three strategies that are most appropriate for you. (Action plan) (Jakes, n.d.).