Week 16: Digital Stories 3

What?
This was our third week of working on our Digital Story project. Our pictures are edited, in order, and ready to make transitions for. We are just waiting to put some other things in place first, so that we can know how long we need to show each picture for in order to make the digital story approximately 3 minutes. The focus of my group's time today was on our music. We are using a Beethoven song. We stuggled with using Audacity because our song was in the wrong format (ringtone), so we used Garageband from Doc Water's Mac. It was simpler to use than I expected, and it made me want a Mac even more than I already do! It was fun listening to the song and deciding which clips of it would fit best with the script and pictures in different parts of our story.

So What?
Music definitely adds a greater level to digital stories. If the music appropriately matches the pictures, script, and feeling of the rest of the story, it can help bring out emotions and create connections. We tried our best to chose more upbeat parts of our song for more cheerful parts of our story, and slower, sad sounding music for the parts of our story that we wanted people to feel more sorrowful. I found that it really did add a lot to the story. Before we finalized and fixed the music clips, there was a cheerful and upbeat melody playing while pictures showed a boy crying and pictures of scary medical tools. We chuckled at how ridiculus that was, and it emphasized to us the importance of choosing appropriate music to enhance the story rather than detract from it.

Now What?
Though creating a digital story is a lot of work, I have had a fun time doing it so far. I have been suprised to find that the tools like PhotoStory and GarageBand are actually very simple to use. I expected things to be more confusing and challenging than they actually have been, which makes me more willing and excited to make more digital stories in the future. I am excited to encorporate them into my classroom because it will give a new way for students to learn. Watching digital stories will help catch their attention, make connections, create emotion, add variety, and can be very enjoyable and memorable. Having students create their own digital stories will help them use higher order thinking skills, incorporate many learning styles, give variety to assignments and projects, give them opportunities to be creative and unique, and give them a challenging yet fun project that they can be proud of and learn a lot from.

Video: Millenial Generation
In this clip, students shared their "tech wish list" of technology they would like to have access to. They included what they believed "media mobility" to be. They determined that media mobility was having the ability to have technology with you wherever you are, whenever you want it. They predicted that technology will become more time effective, take out a lot of hassle, and allow more ways for interacting and communicating. I agree that technology has been advancing by leaps and bounds, and will continue to do so. I'm excited to see what new things they come up with next. I believe that the students' wish lists that they mentioned will definitely come to pass in the not-too-far off future. It will be fun to see what new technologies I can learn about and apply in my classroom.

Week 15: Digital Stories and PhotoStory

What?

This week we learned more about digital stories and specifically how to use PhotoStory in this process. PhotoStory is free to download and is very easy to use. It allows you to edit your pictures with things such as red-eye, cropping, highlighting, rotating, black and white, etc. You can also make transitions between each picture, such as panning in and out. I was surprised to learn that you can also work with music on this program. You can upload mp3's of songs that have already been created, or you can make your own music through Photo Story. It has several options and varieties to mix and match with in order to find the style of music you need to match your story. My group is doing our digital story on manualism and oppression of Deaf people.

So What?

Digital stories can be a very effective way of catching students' attention, involving multiple learning styles, creating interest, and giving a basic introduction of the topic students will be learning about. Because there are free and easy tools available such as Photo Story, ditigal stories are a very practical and fun thing for teachers to create for lessons. It does not have to be limited to only teachers, though. Many students would have a great time creating their own digital stories, and would learn a lot from that assignment. Digital stories are a fun way to learn and should definitely be incorporated into classroom instruction where possible.

Now What?

I plan on brainstorming about lessons and units in my curriculum that would benefit the most from incorporating a digital story. I'd like to use a couple digital stories throughout the semester because they are interesting, captivating, have good information and images, and help create diversity in lessons. I would also like to brainstorm about ways to assign a digital story project to my students. It would be fun to let them pick a topic relating to the Deaf community, culture, or ASL that they want to learn more about. Once they approved their topic, they could work in groups to create a digital story about that topic to present to the class. This assignment would involve many different learning styles, be flexible enough to match the students' interests, let them be creative and unique, and be an assignment that is different from the ones they typically have to do.

Video: Did You Know 3.0
This was a very interesting video for me. Before seeing some of these videos that we have been assigned to watch this semester, I had no idea how much the world uses and depends on technology. I knew that it's basically how we live today, but I had no real idea of the numbers or how to visually and concretely imagine such an impact. The following are some of the facts the video mentioned that really surprised me and helped me understand what an impact technology has had in the world:

- The top 10 in-demand jobs for 2010 didn't even exist in 2004
- Today the number of text messages sent and received every day exceeds the population of the entire planet
- For students starting a 4 year technical degree, half of what they learn in their first year of study will be outdated by their 3rd year of study

The video really made me think when it said how we are currently developing technology to solve problems we don't even know are problems yet. We are training students for jobs and technologies that don't even exist yet. We are progressing so much, that it is almost overwhelming to think of the things to come. There seems to be no limits anymore. It's exciting, and it makes me want to keep up on the latest technologies in order to know at least as much as my students will know, and be able to use those technologies and tools in the classroom.