Using Digital Stories in the Classroom

In class we had to use a quote about education to form the basis for a digital story. We used a minimum of 5 images to create a digital story around the quote we chose. We used Windows Photo Story 3 to accomplish this task. The quote I chose was "Tell me and I'll forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and I'll understand" -Chinese Proverb. I think this is a powerful quote for any aspiring teacher to understand. Students need to be involved in learning to really gain anything from it.

The digital story project falls under the ISTE NETS standard 1 which is "Facilitate and Inspire Student Learning and Creativity" A digital story is just another form of media for a student to use to express their opinions and ideas in a creative way. It also goes with my quote that a digital story involves the student in their learning which helps them understand the material better.

A digital story project can definitely be used in my future classroom to facilitate learning. It can allow students to master content while allowing them to express their ideas. I am an aspiring social studies teacher and this could be a valuable digital tool in citizenship education. This project can help my students express their political or cultural ideas and opinions in a way that also provides a creative outlet for them. I think in my future the digital story will be an invaluable resource.

An activity I think I may be able to use in my teaching future would be one that deals with citizenship education, cultural diversity, and geography. I would assign a different country to each student and in their photo story they would be required to locate the country and display images of maps and geographical terrain of the country. They would also use what they learn from the culture to create a fictional story about themselves traveling tot he country and the cultural differences they may encounter. The students would then present their photo stories to the class so everyone would have an opportunity to learn about the different cultures in our world. I think this activity will not only stimulate my student's creativity but also assist them in learning about different cultures and countries.

Overall I believe digital storytelling is a very useful too to not only stimulate creativity for students but also to involve them in the learning process so they may better understand the content.