My Blog Winners!

Professionalism:
I think my most professional post is about Digital Writing. I explained how I used it, and I provided links. As a professional should, I gave both the pros and cons of using photo story which has been my main venue for digital storytelling. I also gave several practical uses for it. Although there is not much professional controversy in it, unlike some of the other blogs that discussed ethical issues of professional blogging, I feel it was representative of my philosophy on professional blogging.

For creativity and design I picked my Glogster entry. I think it is reflective of both my creativity and my blossoming design skills. Again I explained its purpose and its value in my classroom. I specifically connected it to my project so it was more meaningful to me than just doing a random Glogster. I think it involved quite a few of the digital values we are trying to instill by using technology. I think the poster involve transmedia navigation in the collection of materials and the remixing of them. Multitasking and appropriation are also components of this project. While simulation occurs in the later tasks of the voice thread and the blog.

Project!

So, I am inspired to work on my project. Does anyone know if there is a way to speed up voice thread? It goes so torturously slow.

Letters Home

Glogster

This is one aspect of my final project that I wanted to share. I am going retell one story from Tim O'Brien's novel The Things They Carry. It will be multigenre, and through it I will be trying to more deeply understand one of the stories. this spring Iplan to use it as a model for students as they will retell a different story from the novel.

I plan to use the following tools:
Glogster
voice thread
A blog
A photo story
A wiki

I will retell the story in the following genres:
A letter home (using Voice thread)
A family blog
A movie poster (Glogster)
A news article (wiki)
A found poem (wiki)

Here is my first GLOGSTER!!

Collaborative Writing

I think wikis would be great for teaching literary theory. Students would be assigned a theory such as the feminist theory or the reader-response theory. In groups they could then create a wiki which could include the following pages:

• A history of the theory
• A description of the theory
• An application of the theory
• A page of further resources
  

An entire class could also just create one wiki, and small groups of kids would be responsible for one theory which could then be one page of the wiki.

I also really like Liz Boeser's consistent use of wikis as a class-made study guide for the books they read. Students would be given different responsibilities as the reading occurred. One group could collectively be responsible for plot elements, one could map literary devices, one group could pose reader-response questions for each section, etc.

Here is the commoncraft video of instructions, which would be easy for students to understand.

Here is a link I think Mike Walker sent to us about 50 uses for Wikis in your class.

I think the problems are pretty obvious concerning collaborative writing. Some people may not complete their part of the project or may be passive participants. This is true in any class activity, however, and perhaps, since this is such a public forum of presentation, it would motivate those students to be engaged.

November 3, Digital Storytelling, Post #7

I have used Photo Story numerous times. It is a great, easy tool for kids. The first year I did it the kids basically taught themselves it was so easy. I feel like I have not fully explored its capabilities though. I would like to learn how to download my own music since the music provided is less than thrilling.

An issue I have had are that kids need to save projects to a jump drive. There is not enough space in their folders for the project. It simply won't open the next day. Also, I cannot figure out how to post a Photo Story project anywhere (like this blog for example). I can post them on Edline which is great, but I'd like to know how to do it here, so I can share more easily with a broader audience.

I have kids take poems they have written and set them to music and images. I prefer that the images are of their own taking specifically for this poem, but time and my planning does not always permit this.

They could do this for lots of things the- the retelling of a short story or the telling of a story through thematic ideas and symbols.

Edina has a great page just for digital storytelling!

Here are some examples of basic PS projects. These were posted, so there has to be a way. I will email about it.

This is an example that I found about the Jena Six. It is basic, but engaging.

I will try posting some of my students' examples.