class-digital-storytelling


 

Wiki Main Page >  Digital Storytelling Class

 

Digital Storytelling Class Resources

 

Introduction

Digital storytelling can help students present their work more effectively and engagingly. It provides the opportunity to work with a a variety of media and examine how media is used to 'persuade'.  Presenting their projects online expands the audience for their work and can provide opportunities for feedback from other students, teachers and people outside of their classroom. 

 

The tools highlighted here are a selection of easy to use, online tools that can help students tell stories through photos, voice, video and music. You'll find more examples and ideas on the Digital Storytelling Resource Page.

 

During this session we'll:

 

Helpful Resources

 

 

Selected Tools & Examples


1: Glogster for Education

http://www.glogster.com/edu/

Posters with pizzazz. Photos, text, images, audio, video - all in a digtal poster. Education service lets you set up accounts for your students and keeps their work private.

 

 

2: Animoto for Education

http://animoto.com/education

Upload photos, use Animoto's music or your own, add text slides. Let Animoto create the slide transitions and turn it into a video slide show. 30 second videos are free. Longer videos for a fee.

 

 

3: XTimeline

http://xtimeline.com

Display photos, video and text on a timeline. Link back to original sources. Can allow group editing. My dust bowl example isn't a very good use of this tool, but I've embedded a video to see how that works and tested other features.

 

 

4: PhotoPeach

http://www.photopeach.com/

Nice for slides where the audio doesn't need to synch with the images. Limited number of audio files available at PhotoPeach. You can't upload your own audio. Though YouTube videos with audio can be used. They YouTube video itself is embedded on the player page and plays in the background. Interesting way to avoid copyright issues?  I like this site for personal slide shows, may not be as useful for a serious project presentation.

 

 

5: Prezi 

http://prezi.com

Interesting tool for creating presentations. Place photos, videos and text on a big poster board sort of space. Specify the order for displaying each item. When the presentation is running it zooms in on each item. You can talk about each item in turn. Still in beta testing, you may need to wait for an account.

 

 

 


Class Exercise

Create 1 or 2 sample projects using the tools shown above or other tools that you'd like to try. And in the process become familiar with finding creative commons licensed photos & music and embedding projects on a wiki page.

 

NOTE: You'll need to save the photos & music to your computer for re-use in the sample projects.

 

Step 1: Select a piece of music. Pick a song from the Digital History project, a great collection of older music. Pick a song that you can build a story around. For more music sources, see Joyce Valenza's list of  Copyright Friendly Music & Sound sources.

 

Step 2: Find 5-10 photos for your project.

Make sure the photos are copyright-free and licensed for reuse. Be sure to copy the URL for the photos and give credit to the original source. (Add photo links to delicious.com to keep track of them or add to your flickr faves listing or just take good notes!)

Search Sources:

Step 3: Create a story! Pick 1 or 2 the storytelling tools and create your sample projects.

 

Step 4: Display your project. Embed your project on your class wiki page and write some notes about how you could incorporate this into a classroom lesson plan.

 


Credits for images and music used in my Dust Bowl Years examples.

Photos – flickr.com: darylfurr/156949845/, chrisjman/215390433/, sjrohde/2512930620/,  2425/433339724/, myeye/3182214903/, 43493370@N00/133000568/  Music from: www.authentichistory.com/ We Sure Got Hard Times Now.

 

 

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notes - 8/09

add voki, blabberize - paige's witch example