As anyone who has seen the history channel, or The Civil War by Ken Burns, you have experienced digital storytelling. It is almost like watching a picture book, but there are no words to the pictures, except what the narrator is sharing. It is a very interesting concept that is fairly easy to accomplish even with minor skills with a computer. Put together pictures, you know, those things that say 1000 words, and tell a story using the pictures to ensnare the audience. The benefit is that you can touch people on an emotional level, even if you have only a base knowledge of things like iMovie.
This is much more meaningful if you give this as an assignment for your students. They get to voice their learning in a better environment than just a plain old PowerPoint. Especially useful in Language Arts and Social Studies, there are many reasons to assign this as a project. There are actually ways to use this in a scientific sense, maybe as the start of a debate, an persuasive piece about why to fund stem cell research, or as an advertisement on why you should visit Cell City and the sites you'd see there.
This could also be assigned to explain a scientific theory; who came up with it, how they did the research on it, and why was it significant. Since I am moving on to genetics soon, this might be a way for them to explore and explain about Mendel and his explorations using pea plants. Though it is better if there are a lot of options as to what to story tell. This is because storytelling is a personal thing and to do it right, it is vital to be emotionally involved, or at least interested in the telling. This would make a better project and one that many would be interested in seeing and learning from.
Hey Elizabeth,
ReplyDeleteI love the idea of digital storytelling, it has so many wonderful applications in education. Last month one of the media assets that I created for class involved digital storytelling. Students are constantly asked to write stories, but we live in a time where they should also be able to visually tell stories. In researching media literacy last week, I came upon a number of articles that stress the importance of educating students about media. Most significantly, teaching students how to interpret and analyze visual media. What better way to teach these elements than to have the students create their own projects. Digital storytelling is the perfect medium for media literacy education.
I am not a science person at all, it was definitely not my favorite subject as a student, but if I had projects like you suggest I might have enjoyed it more. It's time for teachers to start thinking outside of the box.
I am sure that you have visited these sites, but if not you should check them out, they are great resources for digital storytelling. Edutopia.org and http://digitalstorytelling.coe.uh.edu/index.html. They are amazing sites.
I have to agree with Alicia. I think I may have liked science class with a teacher like you doing projects like you are suggesting. Let me know how things go as you implement them! Awesome ideas!
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