Mega Bites and Messages

Digital Storytelling is sometimes described as the practice of using computer animation tools to tell stories. Just as we do with traditional writing activities, digital stories can focus on a specific topic, point of view and/or purpose, Digital stories are engaging to students because they mix cartoon-like pictures, with the added attributes of music, sound and text. Kids love them because their stories literally come to life. You can call them digital stories, mini movies, or animated tales-they all allow children to create and think.

Find more videos like this on MACUL Space

For primary students allowing them to mess about with animation software teaches characters, setting, and plot in a visual way. Children can easily identify the character if they have drawn, created, or picked it out of the available clip art choices. Drawing or choosing the background scene illustrates the stories setting. Animating their characters allows students to create the “actions” for the plot of their story. After exploring animation students seem to be able to fill out a story mountains, story maps, and other graphic organizers with a bit more detail.

I like to follow up the animated story by having the students write about the animation they created. Linking digital stories to more traditional writing activities allow student to see the connections between the written word and the digital world of virtual reality.

For older students (in perhaps year four) a more traditional planning approach may be in order to Create a Digital Story
•Decideon the topic-researching, note taking
• Collect images
• Plan,-outlining, and storyboarding ,author purpose, point of view
• Draft: Write a script
• Choose your animation Site or Software
• Revise: modifying images and organization
• Edit: timing, images, and narration
Publish the final product

Digital stories can vary in length, but my student last between 10 seconds for a clay animation- up to around 10 minutes. And the topics that are used in Digital Storytelling range from recounting of historical events in clay, describing life cycles, understanding our community to creating a simple adventure a n animal might have. Most stories that primary children write are well suited to the digital domain of animation. There are so many wonderful sites to use for Digital Storytelling I am sure you will find one that suits your needs. The following site does a wonderful job of explaining the educational benefits of digital story telling http://digitalstorytelling.coe.uh.edu/index.html

Here is a list of my favorites sites and the tools I use with my primary students:

My Life; Cell based animation- make the elephant dance. My 4and 5 year olds love this, and giggle and giggle.

Fluxtine Animation; Can be used online or downloaded This is a real favorite with my 7 year olds. They are especially taken with the space background and objects. It doesn’t offer sound-but that doesn’t seem to matter as my kids seem to make the sound effects for their story.

Shidonni - Creative fun for kids, bring your sketch pets to life www.shidonni.com/ Children draw an animal in a simple paint program on line and the animal comes to life. They draw the background (setting), and even create food the pet eats. My 6 year olds got help from my older students to “write” the story that went with their movie. For weeks after using this one whenever we used an image they volunteered the setting and character they saw!

Moovl; Moovl is a unique online tool which teachers and pupils can use to draw, animate and apply physical properties to objects in order to bring their pictures and words to life. I love this one because it ads science into the story writing process:

Me and My Movie- Super simple animation movie maker- Just drag and drop clips for a fast mashup.

Wild Life Film maker- Make a custom nature film with animal clips. Another great Mash-up

Digital Films- Make your digital film for free! Choose a background scene, characters, animated actions,
dialog, introduction, and ending credits. Put your name as the producer and email the movie to your friends! You can also signup for free. I suggest using those temporary email accounts for your class.

Animasher-Create a short movie on line

Movie Blender -3d animation

Junior Movie Maker-make a movie with animated stickers

Kerploff-super simple story writer.

Zimmer Twins- Animation make a movie

Fuzzwuch-has two programs Minivid is dead simple animation. It’s never been easier to put your thoughts into motion Currently in very private beta, the Animator is a complete online animation studio, with powerful features and the freedom to let you flex your expressive muscles.

Dvolver Movie Maker -Dvolver’s Movie Maker helps you make a movie in a few simple steps. When completed you can send it to a friend., post it to your website, or use Cam Studio to do a screen capture.

Aniboom- spaceshifter create animation right on Line This is a bit more complete but well suited to the primary student IMHO.
and of course Photostory

Check out the list of Animated sites on the side bar.

During a time when the phrase 21st Century Learner is so over used we are left wondering what it all means. Taking a long hard look at education today we are forced to acknowledge that while the world has changed at a record pace; businesses are forced to retool and rethink; our classroom have remain very much the same. We do many things well in education: We teach children how to memorize, we do a fair job in helping them research and report but what we are lacking in, is challenging them to think, create, rethink and problem solve. Let’s face it- they are used to being spoon fed and everything in their life, is delivered in an instant!.

Enter brand new Web Cam’s. With no regard for directions my 8th grade digital natives plug them in and are surprised when they don’t work. “What have you tried?” I ask.

“I plugged it in and it didn’t come on. This thing is junk!” replies the teenager who is accustomed to instant everything.

“Perhaps you need to read the directions, install the software?” I offer as advice.

Before the sentence is completed they are putting the software in and amazed when it doesn’t auto install. After asking them what drive the disk was put in, inquiring as to how they could access that drive, , and finally asking them which icon did they think would install the software (The Install icon). They are finally off and running. Now I fully realize it would have been far easier to install the software for the Web Cam’s myself. The kids would have been happier, my lesson would have proceeded quicker-BUT…what would they do next time they encountered a problem? Too often we do things for the children instead of allowing them to struggle and then succeed. Now I am not advocating for letting them sit there frustrated. I am advocating not doing everything for them-instead asking them questions that make them think, and make connections that will serve them far better in the future, than any project I ever teach.

How many times have students visited a website and before the page is done loading -their hand is in the air asking what to do next? There are days I cannot finish two sentences without hearing students blurt out…”What if…?” Too often we simply give them the quick answer- we want to move on.( My gosh they are only here for 40 short minutes.)  I am here to advocate for processing time. Time to think! Thinking is a good thing!  Embrace a few moments of silence. I call it power thinling with my 1st-4th graders.

The rule in my room is read, try, check with your neighbor and then raise your hand for help. By using this system, by the time I managed to starting moving around from workstation to work station, half the hands go down and I am left with a much more manageable 10-12 kids to help. I praise, the kids who take chances and try, instead of waiting for their individual, private, personal help! It takes me a good couple of months in the computer lab to turn their thinking on (I only see them twice a week). It takes even longer to get them to actually read the information on the website. But the effort is worth it because I do not spend so much time pointing to icons they need to click, walking over an pointing at the directions and restating the same directions over and over again!

How do I put it all together???
Here is an example of 2nd Grade Mixing the World of Digital Storytelling with Writing –stir twice for good measure-screen capture and print. The children created a story on Shidonni drawing the character, setting (background), and the animal animates. (They especially love drawing the food that the animal later eats.) I encourage them to talk-walk around and ask each other questions about what their animal is doing. The last ten minutes of class the 6th graders arrive. They type the stories the children dictate. If the second grader is stuck-the 6th grader asks them questions to get them thinking. While this processing is going on I run around and use Cam Studio to capture their animated movie. The result- An Animated movie that teaches character, setting and plot, and a written account of their movie which we lovingly call the script! The bonus…that would be the 6th graders having to ask questions in order to get the 2nd graders to put together a story.

Now about those Web Cam’s?????