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.

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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?????

If there is a area in education that is more murky I am unaware of any. There is so much conflicting information on what educators may and may not use for classroom instruction ,that most of us end up hopelessly lost reading the small print. So after reading everything I could find on the subject I am going to take a stab at figuring it out. Since I am not a lawyer ,just a humble educator , I always hope that the effort I put into citing sources counts. So here is my best understanding.

Copyright is the right attached to an original work of art or literature. That means whoever wrote or drew owns it and only the person /organization the author has extended the rights too, can use it. If you take someone else’s work and claim it as yours, they can seek to recover compensation (in a court of law) That’s the part that always scares us! HOWEVER there are the list of exceptions-otherwise know as wiggle room.

1. Copyright does not apply to opinions nor facts. So you cannot copy an entire sections of a work without citing the source-but you can rewrite the facts in your own style and you have not violated copyright.
2. Government works are not protected (The ones they protect are top secret and we never get to see)
3. Things published over 75 years ago-the thought is the author who owned the work has passed away.
4. The author gives permission and places them in the public domain. ( So if someone put something on the internet without reserving the rights it is assumed they have put it in the public domain.
5. Fair use- “Through the fair use provision, teachers have access to works far beyond classrooms or textbooks and thereby may expand and enrich learning opportunities for student learning.”

Fair Use
An educator’s best friend is the Fair Use Policy. They are many different definitions of Fair Use –and Fair Use DOES NOT Mean we get to use as much of everything that we feel we need to.

1. Copying- Is okay if done spontaneous, for temporary use. ( If you copy it do not use it year after year)
2. Copying a paragraph or section of a web page is okay-but copying the entire chapter is not. ( A good rule of thumb is to place the original authors name in parenthesis and/or the URL-giving credit where credit is due.)
3. Anything you copy in part, cannot be sold under your name without the author’s permission. No making money off from someone else’s work.
4. Music- general agreement seems to be 1/3 of a total song but not more that 30 seconds. There are many artists and sites that offer free music. I encourage the use of those.

On Wiki pages…
It is permissible to copy a paragraph to refresh your students recollection. Just give the source a credit.
If you use a screen shot and links to other sites-mention where the original content came from.
If you use 30 second clips from popular artists in a multimedia presentation for students, give the artist a credit at the end.
The main thing is do not sell the work.

The real issue behind all of this for teachers is a question of Morals and Ethic’s. As role models for students, teachers have a mandate to practice integrity and trustworthiness. While funds are always tight, we cannot be tempted to take what is not ours-it is in fact stealing. My district has not given any of us a raise in 3 years and with the cost of living going up I do understand how tight money is. The good news about Web 2.0 is that there is now so many wondeful resources that are available the public domain.

The best way I can describe fair use is this- you may uses pieces and parts-not the whole -and always give credit where credit is due.

Here are web sites that do a far job than I desscribing these issues:

Has a great chart you can print-so you know how much you can use
http://home.earthlink.net/~cnew/research.htm#Fair%20Use%20Matrix%20for%20Teachers

Standards for stermination if something meets fair use criteria
http://home.earthlink.net/~cnew/research.htm#Teachers%20and%20Fair%20Use

Fairuse Guidelines for Multimedia projects
http://www.education-world.com/a_curr/curr280d.shtml

A quizz covering many situations we all deal with-seee how you did?
http://www.techlearning.com/db_area/archives/TL/2002/10/copyright_quiz.php

Tags: copyright, copywrong, fair, use

The Right Tool for each Learner

• Mind Mapping
• Charting and Diagrams
• Videos and Photos

Auditory Learners

• Podcasts
• Presentation Tools
• Audio Tools
• Text Readers
• Audio Books

Kinesthetic Learners

• Note Taking Tools
• Bookmarking
• Ineraction
• Collaboration

As a teacher I admit to loving most things digital. I see digital tools as an enganging way to get and hold students attention, and the fact they relate to them so well makes teaching and learning very natural. As I am often the cheerleader for technology I also get to listen to fellow teachers express their digital frustrations.

Just recently some teachers were informed that they would not be able to change grades or drop students, by way of the IT department locking out their computer grading program. Without getting into grading policy and all those things better left to school boards, my concern was the distrust in technology that resulted from the move. In one move the computer changed from being a tool to help teachers record and average grades to a teacher monitoring device. I bet you can guess what the teacher’s reactions were!

Teachers all over the place are experiencing digital frustrations of their own. As Bill Ferriter reported in his blog, “Teachers are frustrated when, district firewalls are blocking every service that they want to use, their tech contacts are no where to be found, and their access to critical resources is insufficient to meet the demands of their digital efforts. ” It is easy to see teachers could become discouraged and the promising uses of technology will remain unexplored because of well intentioned oversight.

In the case of our first example a teachers grade book, spiral bound and carried loving between home and school was almost a personal extention of oneself. If an adminstrator asked to see a grade book you located it, copied the page , and the book was still your own. With a networked computerized grade book program-the grade book becomes the districts, to change and modify as they please.

Firewalls and district access policies are real—and they pose challenges for teachers who are working with digital tools for the first time. There is nothing worse than investing hours into the perfect lesson only to have those tools blocked when you are half way through the lesson plans.

Too often schools IT departments are run by IT professionals with no classroom experience so their perspective is somewaht different from an educators. To many of them -using PowerPoint is just the same as using Animoto. Just as often we educators do not realize the security and virus concerns the IT department is protecting district resources against.

One thing I do know is that if technology is going to be able to affect student achievement we need to have better working relationships with IT departments! When you look at the success the UK has had in integrating ICT across the curriculumn the major factor seems to be an overall tech friendly policy implemented from the top down. In the case of the Uk they have not blocked sites-instead they have created many wonderful interactive tools to support curriculumn.

Super Hero Sports Cards- My Junior High Boys are all about Sports so I wanted them to make Sport Stat Cards with a twist. Not only Teams they played on Location by Lattitude3 and Longitude, Graph of their win/ loss records, Awards Predictions… incorporating as many skills as I could dream up.

Where in the world is Flat Stanley- Wanted to send a virtual flat Stanley by email and each week have clues send until the kids figure out where Stanley is. Search on Google Earth. Thought it could be like a geographical scavenger hunt.

Wiki Word Wall Ben’s great ideas of having a wiki where kids get to add the words to a site and collaborate. This was a great project idea I just never got to.

Digital Yearbook My thought was since I was spending so many hours, days, weeks, and months on the darn yearbook I could save each page as a pdf file and post on my wiki. This DID NOT happen because the parents decided no one would BUY the yearbook if they could see the parts they wanted free. Have to think of a way of getting out of doing the yearbook next year. Even though the kids help- it end up becoming a very teacher intensive, boring, and time consuming project. The rest of the teachers run for the hills at the mere mention of yearbook. I am still trying to figure out how I got stuck with it.

Virtual World verses Real World- I wanted to have the man a Lemonade stand in school for 2 weeks and graph their results. Then play the virtual lemonade stand and compare and contrast the learning between the simulation game and the reality.

Voice Thread I thought a wonderful play on words would be to have the kids design and print a quilt square about themselves, ( There really is printable Fabric.) and use Voice Thread to tell about the quilting process.

Making Bloom Taxonomy Bloom I have this crazy idea of collecting student projects that demonstrate the levels of Blooms and putting it all together in a blooming video

News This was going to be the year I tried uStream – Hooked up a camcorder to a computer that was connected to the Internet and had the students do an instant Live Video broadcast. But- I was moved to a new building no camcorder and needed to play catch up on their skills levels- Next year for sure!!

Mediascapes A mediascape blends digital images, video, audio and interactions with the physical landscape. Students download a mediascape onto a portable device, and see how your landscape comes alive as you move through the environment . I wanted to do a historical walk through our city-this project lacked one major thing—Money. I needed to be able to buy some players. Basically, I could have used any mscape player that ran on a device with Windows Mobile 2003 second edition or newer and GPS and a touchscreen. I know ,I know …write a grant—but this past year I wrote the Mother of all grants for Chrysler-3,000 words, cited referenced ect…and nothing-not even a rejection email. I spent many, many hours writing that grant and with the pace of my life I have to determine if I can really give up that much time for no return.

Since summer is coming and I don’t want to forget any of these I decided t post them here where I can add other ideas I come up with summer or during the Michigan Champions Training!

I wanted to make ISPY books with kids creating colleges of digital pictures

Teacher’s seem to be born with a unique skill set, or tool box that they use to manage, teach, and motivate students. The best of us know when to push a student, give them space and where that line lies in middle. This skill set is the most valuable when it is combined with best teaching practices that integrate technology. As we shift our thinking to include the uses of technology as tools for organization, communication, research, and problem-solving, we also need to examine our thoughts about content. I cannot think of a single job where employees are routinely given 2 quizzes and 1 test each week. Workers in today’s most successful companies are collaborative, innovative, and have outstanding communication skills.

I am not suggesting throwing the baby out with the bath water. Of course we teach content, study history and even memorize computation facts. I am suggesting that we do this AND move beyond those constraints. Integrating technology allows us to use content as a springboard for higher level thinking skills and including “what if… statements. Can we conclude a PowerPoint on the respiratory system with some thought provoking questions? What if oxygen levels were depleted/? What would happen to the brain? How is human respiration similar to fish??? What is we took a digital camera and took close-up pictures of parts of the human body-could students identify and knowing the function figure out how the design helps the function be accomplished?

At it’s simplest form I am suggesting a marriage of integrated information skills designed around collaborative projects. Units and lessons can incorporate technology tools to help student be more productive, create a safe environment to “simulate and test ideas”, expand content, and provide authentic publications. The computer cannot be an electronic workbook-lets face it workbooks are cheaper. It isn’t just a research tool for reports-we’ve had encyclopedias for years. Let’s use technology to do the things we couldn’t do before. For example instead or reading about medieval times and writing a report can we consider….

Experiencing history by using our avatar to visit Medieval England. (Once Second Life is secure for students) Let’s fly to England on Google Earth and look at castle ruins. How about playing the Art of Chivalry – Medieval Knight Game, to role play what life is like in that time period. Finally can we predict, research and then discover what games we play today came from that era? Is any of the architecture found in that time period reproduced today. Perhaps we could design a village using Sketch up Did they read and write? Can we locate writing from that time period? What occupations practiced back then are no longer jobs? What jobs do we have today that may not be needed in the future?

Technology should allow us to stretch-do more thinking-more producing. Let’s not just think outside the box- but consider what the box even is?

The lists at the side are teacher approved websites organized by topic. In other words these are all sites I have used with children from k-8th grade. Not all sites are appropriate for all age levels which is why I will beginning adding lists by age as well.

You should always review a site before ever using it with students as sites change daily!

After feeling like I was hogging all the blog space on MACUL Space- I decided it was time to find a place to do my educational Blogging. So here I am world-keeping an educational journal of what I am doing. As this school draws to a close I am hoping find  some time to reflect on what worked-what didn’t -and then create a new plan for next school year.