Digital Storytelling Project

My digital story was a "how-to" video of basic bike maintenance and safety.  This would be incorporated into a middle school science or social studies unit on humans and living sustainably in our environment.

MT State Standards-Science Content Standard 5
5.4 Use scientific knowledge to investigate problems and their proposed solutions and evaluate those solutions while considering environmental impacts.


Bozeman Public Schools, District 7 Standards
HR1.0 Resources:  Students use scientific knowledge to investigate problems and their proposed solutions and evaluate those solutions while considering environmental impacts.
HR1.2. Students discuss how the use of natural resources affects their community/world, and how overuse of resources can have adverse effects on climate and society.


Students will be able to identify one human activity with negative environmental impact.  Then, students will develop their ideas with a "how-to" video depicting one way in which humans can reduce their environmental impact and how to do this activity effectively.

This project would be incorporated as part of a unit on sustainability and the environment in a science or social studies classroom.  In looking at human impacts on the environment, the class would engage in discussion on various human activities with adverse environmental impacts.  Then, students would choose one activity that they already do or would like to do in their lives to reduce their own environmental impact.  They would then produce a short "how-to" video that would instruct their peers how they can participate in this activity as well.  Using a digital story format makes the activity much more motivating and engaging.  The digital story turns out much like a Public Service Announcement.  Rather than making a poster board and doing a class presentation, students engage in making their own movie for peers.  This reduces the pressure of a presentation for quieter students, and also reduces the amount of resources (paper, etc.) used for a presentation.  Digital learning and projects can be used in a unit like this as a type of project that is more sustainable.  Digital storytelling makes this project much more interesting and enjoyable for students.

Initially this project takes more preparation by the teacher to be able to know all the skills and how to teach the iMovie program, but in the long run it would be more fun and engaging for students.  Perhaps these videos could even be published to a class or school website, or even a city website and students could feel as though their messages and digital stories were making a difference.  Student satisfaction would be much greater than simply a poster presentation in the classroom.

ASP Final Visit

The final Tech Club went very well.  Andi planned a great Mad Libs activity that the kids had a lot of fun with.  As it is the end of the school year, I strongly believe that having fun in Tech Club and After School is key. The students at this time of year are maxed out, and the more like a game we can make activities, the better.  We used the website http://www.eduplace.com/tales/ and had the students generate various Mad Libs.  Then we printed one out for each student and they could share with Tech Club if desired.  The students had a lot of fun and were fairly on task the entire time.  They were all pretty tired, apparently they had been on a field trip all day and had done a lot of walking around. 


Some thoughts on Tech Club, as a wrap up:


The club was fun, but fairly disorganized.  Students seemed to come and go as they pleased (i.e. if they didn't like what we were doing that day in the club, they would return to After School).  They seemed to think Tech Club was just to play computer games, so I don't know if that's what the last students did with them or if they were just inexperienced.  


There should be a list of students in Tech Club and they should commit to the club for 6 weeks (or the length of MSU student placement).  Our group varied day to day from 8 3rd grade boys to 15 students of various ages to 2 girls, one in 5th grade and one in 2nd grade.  It was challenging to plan a lesson or activity without any idea who is going to show up to the club.  


I understand it is the end of the year and students are pretty all over the place, as well as having other after school commitments, but it would be helpful to have a little more organization and consistency.

ASP Visit 5

Today was a little bit of a hodgepodge.  Our plan had been to finish up PowerPoints and hopefully have all students present today.  We are used to having around 3 or 4 boys in Tech Club.  today about 15 students showed up, most expecting to play computer games the entire period.  We had to scramble to make a new plan with all the extra students.  We didn't think we had enough time or resources to help each student create their own PowerPoint, so we had new students work on typing while students that already had most of their PowerPoint done finish up.  
I think this went ok, it was unfortunate that the other students were just stuck doing typing skills the whole time, but they were focused and stayed on task.  


The great part of the day was that one of the students finally presented his PowerPoint...4 class periods later!  It was great though, he had pictures and animation to his slides and he did a great job.  


I am not sure what to expect of Tech Club next time.  There could be 15 students, there could be 3.  There isn't much structure to the program, and it seems as though students have the freedom to go between the After School program and Tech Club, which is a little frustrating.  Some of them seem to show up just to see what we are doing, and then decide they would rather go back to After School, so that's a little tough.  Hopefully we will have a couple more students present and then Andi has a great idea for a google docs/mad libs activity for next time.  I think it will be fun and it can accommodate a large number of students if necessary.

ASP Visit 4

Thursday's visit was a little discouraging.  We all came into the day excited about continuing the powerpoint project that we had started on Tuesday.  The students had been fairly excited about it, and although it was slow going due to the lack of typing skills, they seemed to enjoy the project and writing about themselves.  We planned to continue the activity where we left off, hopefully finishing the general outline of the slides and then helping them add special features to the slides.  However, only two of the original students showed up, and then we had two new students.  We helped the new students start on the project, but then our two regular students left to return to the after school program.  After School was doing a really fun activity with a play and costumes, and the students didn't want to miss out on that.  I can understand this, but it made continuing the project very difficult.  Thursday was also an early release day, so the students had been at after school for almost 2 hours by the time we got there, so they were pretty burnt out.  

We started the two new students on the PowerPoint, and they both seemed to like the activity.   They are impatient to see the project completed and want to present it to their peers.  Hopefully there will be other students in the club to present to!  Next time our plan is to continue the project because it seems unfair to cut the project short for the students who are enjoying it.  The time is so short to work with that it is taking longer to complete this project than we had intended.   Hopefully they will get to present before our 6 visits are up.

ASP Day 3 Visit

Today Nathan Wahl led the class.  We started with the BBC site, Dancemat typing, for about 20 minutes and then went into the activity.  The typing program is still going very well, I like starting class with this activity.  It calms the students down and gets them to focus in on the computers and a specific activity.  I hope by continuing to do this typing program, the skills will eventually translate into actual typing improvement.  Right now the students just see it as a game, and as soon as we move into an activity, they revert back to to the one-finger typing, individually searching for each letter.  


After typing, Nathan introduced the Digital Biography activity.  The students had four questions to answer about themselves and write the answers on individual powerpoint slides.  We worked on this for the remainder of class.  None of the students finished, so next time we are going to finish and help add features and photos to the slides.  Then students will be able to present their powerpoint to their peers in Tech Club.


Question:  What is a good way to go about searching for images to place on powerpoint slides?  Ideally we would use the clip art, but is there a way they could get pictures from the internet as well, or is it too risky to search for photos on the internet?  I would imagine a school internet connection has some blocks in place to prevent inappropriate sites from turning up in a search, but I am not totally sure.  Any suggestions?

ASP Day 2 Visit

I planned the activity for day 2.  On day 1, I had noticed that the students were all doing 1-finger super slow typing.  I decided to try the BBC site for dancemat typing.  I tried it myself and I thought it would be something they would enjoy.  I wasn't sure if it was going to be over their heads or not, so I planned on trying that activity for about 10-15 minutes and then I had another activity. 


For the second activity I planned a scavenger hunt online.  I created a worksheet with various questions such as "what is the weather forecast in Dallas, TX" and then directed them to the National Geographic Kids site and had them search for some various pieces of information there.


The worksheet looked like this:

Tech Club Scavenger Hunt

 By using google.com and visiting other appropriate sites, fill in as many answers as you can!

1.  Weather forecast for Dallas, TX for Saturday, May 19, 2012

 list website where you found this information:

2. How much snow did Mt. Baker Ski Area, in Washington state, receive this year?_______________________________________________

Website__________________________________________________________

**For the next several questions, please visit the National Geographic Kids site.  List website here:____________________________________________________________

3. What is being celebrated this Saturday, May 19^th?

­­

4. Choose one “What’s Popular” link. List choice here:___________

Describe what you discovered________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

5.Choose one “Cool Clicks” link. List choice here________________

Describe what you discovered________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

6. Go to the “News” heading on the main Nat. Geo Kids page.  Then click on “Science and Space.” Then choose Freaky Forces of Nature.  State which one you chose and what you learned:

I knew that we would have enough Tech Club members to each help the students search so they were not randomly searching around the internet on their own.  I had the students partner up and then on tech club student was with each pair.  Searching for things on the internet was very, very new for these students.  One student was very proficient at searching for information, but the rest really struggled.  For instance, after typing in the weather forecast search terms, the weather forecast would come up on the screen but some students didn't even recognize that as the answer.  

Most students finished the first 2 questions, with only one student moving on to the National Geographic Kids site.  This was with a teacher sitting and helping each group.  Katelin had mentioned that last semester students researched their favorite animal and then did a powerpoint presentation for the group, so I think orienting them to searching for information online with guidance will be helpful, because they definitely struggled with it.  

I did think about the hoax websites that could be out there after our D2L discussion, so made the worksheet questions very straightforward and then most of them consisted of being only on the National Geographic Kids site, which is a great science site for students, younger and older.  There is a lot of great information and activities on there, and even a lot of teacher resources.  Also, I felt comfortable knowing that there was a low enough student:teacher ratio where no student would be randomly browsing the web on their own.  Although after working with the students I'm unsure that they are capable of browsing the web much at all on their own yet.  

The dancemat typing went really well.  The students really got into following along and really wanted to complete Level 1.  It was great, and a website I would definitely recommend to everyone.  Typing skills are so basic and so important to becoming a technologically literate student.  I am so glad I have the typing skills I do or homework and this class would be painfully slow.  Most people take them for granted, but then I see my dad typing up scientific papers using his one-finger method (which actually has become quite fast over the years) and I'm really glad for that knowledge.  I think we could definitely revisit the dancemat typing over the next few visits, even if it's just for a few minutes at the beginning or end of the club.  It would be great to get the students at least familiar with where their fingers should be on the keyboard.

ASP Day 1 Visit

I have been placed at Whittier Elementary for my Technology Club in-school experience. I am really excited about this because I have been spending some time at Whittier on Monday afternoons helping with the Math and Science Club, which is also a part of the After School Program.  I had already met Katelin St. Peter-Blair, who runs that after school program expertly, and had some familiarity with the students and the school.  The club will meet Tuesday and Thursday from 3:30-4:30.

On day 1 I arrived at 3:30 and met up with Katelin.  I was the only EDU370 student that showed up this day, so it was a pretty laid back day.  I waited while students had snack and then we all went down to the library. Katelin showed me where the computers are stored and the resources available.  I met the librarians.  Whittier has a bank of MacBooks for students to use, which is awesome.  

I didn't have anything planned for Day 1 specifically because I kind of thought I would just be doing an orientation, but Katelin left me with the club so I just went for it.  I met the students, of which there were seven 3rd grade boys.  They were a great group, all really excited for Tech Club.  I think this is because they love computer games, but some mentioned an interest in doing presentations with PowerPoint and Prezi, so I think we will try to do that as well.

I had all the students introduce themselves and tell me one thing they were really excited for in Tech Club.  Most answers consisted of playing games on the computer.  I introduced myself and then we went over some Rules of Respect for Tech Club.  I had the students tell me some rules that they already have at their school and we wrote them down.  These rules mainly consisted of not talking while others are talking, following directions, and being responsible.  The last rule they said was "Always Try," which is one of the main rules in their school, which I thought was neat.

For the last 20 minutes I let them have free play time on the computer. We came up with three websites of games for kids that they could choose from.  These included coolmathgames.com, lego.com, and disneyxd.com.  They were quiet and respectful for the rest of the time which was good because 2nd graders that were doing silent reading time also shared our same space.  

After day 1 I got in touch with all the other EDU370 students and we made a plan for the rest of the program.  For each of the 6 visits, one of us will plan the main activity and the rest of us will be there to facilitate.  I offered to do day 2 since I had already been there, so I made a plan for day 2.