The longstanding tradition of storytelling is enhanced by adding an electronic flavor to what we now call digital storytelling. What student (or educator for that matter) would not be motivated to telling a story – THEIR story – with the enhancements of graphics, video, sound effects and more. If approached properly, educators can bring curriculum alive, engage every student and end up with projects that are meaningful not only in terms of their educational value, but also can unleash a creative storm and touch the heart of an individual. Digital storytelling, when combined with personal experience, will create a powerful learning experience for all.
Most important in planning any unit is to ask, “what is being taught?”. The answer should always include the fact that technology is secondary to the story and to the writing.
The Story Idea
While technology will be the hook and part motivator, the other motivating factor must be a topic of interest to, in this case, the grade 8 student. For this project, students will be asked to write a biography about themselves. Students should feel committed to this topic as they know the subject matter better than anyone else.
Community Building
Having the students write about themselves requires a certain amount of trust. Building this within the classroom will benefit all, and flow over into other areas of subject matter and other areas of school life. Building their stories will require each student to make mini presentations to allow for positive and supportive feedback from their classmates.
Sharing personal details about oneself requires many risks, and these risks must be properly modeled by the teacher to be truly effective. Therefore, it would be immensely beneficial for the teacher to work through the process with the students, or, failing that, present hi/her own, completed biography as an inspiration and guide.
Ideally, this type of project would be introduced near the start of the school year. This timing would allow an appropriate early introduction of the students to each other and also set proper expectations for a positive class environment.
Writing Before Anything
As often expressed, technology should be an incentive and a tool to learning, thus in this case the writing process of this assignment is critical. A structured story with a beginning middle and end and appropriately in the form of a three-act play would work effectively and challenge the students to write a narrative. Students must be taught the structure first, with Act One ending with a problem and the main character (themselves) making a decision to solve that problem, etc. Next, students should begin to brainstorm ideas. The teacher again could help here by providing prompts such as:
· What is the most fun you’ve ever had?
· What can you tell us about your family?
· What are your favorite things to do? Least favorite?
· What sports/hobbies do you enjoy and why?
· What is it about you that no one knows?
Students will then be asked to orally share their answers to these prompts with a partner. The partner should be encouraged to ask questions to clarify thus helping the student relate more to his/her audience. Partners will then introduce each other to the class telling a couple of interesting facts about each other (one minute maximum). This class introduction phase will help clarify ideas, gauge audience reaction and provide even more ideas from other presentations.
Students will now be ready to move on to writing a rough draft, revising it, have it peer edited, then revise it a final time. Along the way, students should be encouraged to start gathering media for their podcast. Again, at this point, students and teacher should present examples of media they intend to use. Students should be guided again by prompts:
· What do your mom and dad sound like? Can you record their voice?
· What would you look like from your dog’s perspective?
· Has your cottage always looked like that or do you have older pictures of it?
· Where is your favorite place located on a map?
This gathering and presenting of images and sound along with the accompanying prompts should stimulate other ideas for their story.
Getting The Story Digitized
After the students have written their story, they should start converting their text to video or digital. In the right-hand column of their story, they should dot-jot how each major section would look or sound. From there, they would create a script then a storyboard from that script. After that, a list of all media required would be created.
Using iMovie, student would simply import scanned images or photos and sounds that they’d gathered. They would then record narration. Keeping the classroom or lab quiet at this time would be a challenge, however, students should be motivated by their own experience and requirement for equal consideration.
Details/Timing/Etc.
In total, this project should take students working one 50 minute period per day, four to five days per week, approximately one to one and a half months to complete. Technically, an ideal situation would be to have a computer lab at the class’ disposal each day, although it would only really be required for the later half of the project. Extreme discipline and cooperation would be required during the recording stage so as not to interfere with each other’s recording. At this point students would need to take turns recording, perhaps going one-half at a time. Either GarageBand or iMovie would be an ideal software choice. Students would require lessons in software use and some experimentation time, but this should be minimal.
Conclusion
This is an assignment that is personal and therefore provides great motivation for students to write. It extends that motivation with a technological and fun conclusion. Although at first glance it seems to be highly individual and personal, the project requires a considerable amount of pair and group work time. Because of this, the activity lends itself to be incredibly useful in building respect, cooperation and esteem among students.
Mark Maunder
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