In our Summer Learning Institute professional development session on Friday we had the good fortune of taking a deep dive into the world of digital storytelling with Wes Fryer. After a 70 minute presentation by Wes on the topic he gave us an invitation to create our own personal digital stories during the balance of the morning and early afternoon. Our teachers were essentially tasked to create a VERY rough five photo digital story in about 100 minutes time. I was BLOWN away by the diversity of projects that people shared to close out the day. I appreciated Wes' efforts to encourage us to focus on our own personal stories instead of making curricular connections. The curricular connections may develop in a much more powerful way now that everyone has experienced the power of this process.
Anyway, here is a digital story that caught my eye (we had about 10 teachers share their stories-they all caught my eye actually-it was an incredibly diverse collection of personal stories). This was created by one of our middle school English teachers, Katie Sauvain, and it is a Voicethread titled, "Making Stuff...a History." Next year our students will be bringing their own laptops to school each day and Katie touches on the idea of creating a balance between consumption and creation.
Katie is thinking about starting a professional blog and I hope she does (encourage her to start a blog with a comment here!!!) If her digital story is any indication of the kinds of things she may share in her blog, then we have alot to look forward to!
If you are reading this via a news reader and you are unable to see this project, I highly recommend that you visit my blog to check out this story. Katie sums up some many feelings and thoughts that many others in our community share as we prepare to enter the world of one to one learning.
Nice job of creation, Katie. I too struggle with finding the balance between reading blogs and being enriched by others' posts and finding time to post to my own blog. I have lots of posts floating around in my head but haven't had time to get them entered. Thanks for the inspiration.
ReplyDeleteOn a funny note, a friend of mine and I used to see how long we could hold our breath during earth science class; it was sooooo boring. With all the resources we have at hand today, earth science is so NOT boring and so important for kids to have a handle on with all the ecological disasters here and imminent.
I hope to add to your voice thread at another time, but it's late, and we still have school tomorrow.
Katie - this is perfect. I think you're exactly on target. I'd love to talk more about what you're thinking of doing. Drop me a note! ecorcoran@lucere.org
ReplyDeleteAll righty, here's the link: http://allthejoyihad.blogspot.com/. Thanks for the encouragement, Matt!
ReplyDeleteKatie, Wow to be honest I handn't really thought about the ratio of consumption vs. production as it relates to using computers. I'm skewed way to far to the consumption side. I need to find a way to get the balance back. Thanks, Aaron
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