Page 179 - Crane's Assignment

Reflect in a blog post to other educators by answering the following questions:

a.       How will digital storytelling improve students’ reading, writing, speaking, and listening skills?

Digital storytelling is an effective technique to enhance a student’s overall development. Through digital storytelling, a student not only focuses on the topic to be learnt, but also the entire process of being a part of storytelling. This process includes writing and reading scripts, listening to other’s stories and ideas, speaking to tell stories, and also communicating with peers and teachers during the various stages of creating digital stories.

b.      Is digital storytelling a good interdisciplinary project? Why or why not?

I believe digital storytelling is a good interdisciplinary project. For example in one of the examples provided in Crane’s book, a class created a digital story to honor Martin Luther King. The students talk about the speech, this kind of digital story could also be used for an English class, focusing on the speech’s literature. Digital storytelling can also be used in an advanced Computer class where students learn about the various applications to create it. Digital storytelling can definitely prove to be an effective interdisciplinary project.

c.       What are some of your ideas for using digital storytelling in your school?

I am not a professional yet. If adequate resources are available in school, digital storytelling can be an effective learning experience for students. There could be many creative ways to incorporate digital storytelling into classrooms. Crane, in the book, Using Web2.0 and Social Networking Tools in the K-12 Classroom mentions a few of the creative ways in which a few teachers incorporated it in their classes. For example, . Digital storytelling can be particularly useful in role-play teaching strategies in History (to talk about prominent leaders and their work), Science (to talk about characteristics of various animal and plant families), English, Mathematics etc. Apart from that, we can also integrate digital storytelling as tutorials for teaching certain tools.

d.      How does video add to the ultimate product?

In Crane’s book, the multimedia poster on Glogster multimedia represented the different aspects of the American Revolutionary War. It is a good way of summarizing a piece of history by involving student’s creative ideas of that period in history. In this poster, along with the images, there were different videos that portrayed the various aspects of that period. Adding videos was an interesting and engaging strategy and it helps in enhancing the effectiveness of the digital story.