Tuesday, March 14, 2017

Thing 4: Digital Storytelling

I had a great time looking through all of the resources for this Thing.  I was very happy to get the change to play around with Adobe Spark; one of the teachers at my school district helped to create an amazing website with Adobe Spark.  #GlobalSpeedChat is connecting people all over the world with simple challenges kids can complete...so cool!  I love the design of the site, and when I signed in to Spark (with my Google account, A+ for that) I learned that you can also create really neat posters.  I created the 'Don't be afraid of these great books..' poster for an upcoming author visit!  It will be a nice resource for my 5th grade Author Club kids to use when they start making signs.  I like how you don't necessarily have to find and upload your own photos...there is a search feature built in that looks for Creative Commons photos.  So helpful and easy!

I also looked at StoryBird (which also has a Google sign-in feature!) and created a silly little story to test out the features.  I'm thrilled that you can also make your own magnetic-style poetry with backgrounds; that will be a great feature to use next year when I do my poetry unit.  I had been having students write poems using their Google Drives, but I think using the poetry feature of StoryBird will be more engaging for them.  I might be able to have some classes use the actual story feature, but for my short library lessons I think the poetry would work better.




The last resource I looked at was the article "6 Reasons You Should be Doing Digital Storytelling with Your Students" by Anna Warfield.  This article would be great to show an administrator because it lays out the benefits of digital storytelling simply yet effectively.  I like how the author made the point that students still need to go through the writing process even though what they're creating is digital.  I also appreciated some of the ideas for digital storytelling at the end of the article.  My favorites were "creating a talk show with a special historical or literary guest," "public service announcement posters or commercials," and "movie trailer for a book."  I think it would be fun for students to create public service posters about things the library does/can offer.  I can also imagine some fun with a talk show.  I bet we could be creative and use Adobe Spark!  I like the idea of scrolling down the screen as the interview progresses.  Things to think about!