Digital Storytelling in Education

I chose to make a digital story that I would create as a teacher to help students understand a new concept. Using a topic I had just written about in my SME 301 (Science for Elementary Schools) class, I made my digital story about how light is needed to see color and how different colors reflect and absorb different wavelengths of light. The information presented in this video was based on a couple of the GLCEs for physical science in 3rd grade, in the categories of energy and properties of matter. Since color and light are visual properties of things we see around us, making a video definitely seems like a good tool for presenting it. VoiceThread worked out very well for me in creating the story. I was able to upload images very easily and I had no trouble figuring out the voice recorded comments. I ran into a little trouble trying to use the doodler and talk at the same time. I tended to forget what I wanted to say next (or lose my place reading off the script I created) while I was concentrating on drawing a line in the correct place on the image. The other problem I had was forgetting to switch back and forth between my two identities between pages. I would be using one identity as the last comment on one page and then I would forget to switch back when I started the first comment on the next page. It wasn't a big deal, I just had to redo a couple comments to get the identities correct with the flow of my story. I tried to be a little lighthearted with my story, creating a conversation of sorts between myself and my dog (the other identity). I'm hoping that 3rd grade students would enjoy that kind of thing.

I can see digital storytelling being a useful tool in pretty much every subject area. My story was an example of how it could be used in science, as a way to connect verbal information with a specific visual idea, which I feel is especially helpful in science. Digital stories could be used to same way to present information in social studies, such as displaying a location on a map followed by a picture of people who live in that location or important monuments. Multiple voices could be used to tell stories from history to enhance understanding of certain events. In language arts, either the teacher or students could create videos to serve as book reviews, biography reports, or to orally present poetry. I can also see uses for digital storytelling in math to present calculations or diagrams to students in ways that they can watch and listen to many times when they don't understand something. The doodler function would be useful for pointing out a specific part of a math problem, or a point of interest on a graph or geometric diagram. Videos like this could also work for presenting students' artwork or writing for themselves or parents to view or listen to. The format of a video of images with voice recordings will probably also capture students' interest much better than more traditional methods of presentation. I can see a lot of potential for digital storytelling when I am a teacher. I'm a little uncomfortable with recording my own voice and I tend to be picky about how my recordings sound, but I could probably get over that eventually. Other than that, I can definitely see digital storytelling being a useful tool.

Bringing the Web to Me

For my project this week I chose to seek out content related to a particular subject area in my teaching. Math is one of my minors and I've mentioned in this blog before about wanting to use technology to help seek out ideas for math instruction, particularly ideas I can use to make math more engaging for students. I've had experience in some of my other teaching classes in searching out resources that would be useful for instruction in reading and writing, but not for math as of yet. This assignment seemed like a good opportunity to poke around on the web and find blogs, news, and other sites related to math education.

I found a couple blogs on math education that I think will be useful, Math Education Research Blog, written by a math ed professor in Sweden, and Homeschool Math Blog, written by a homeschool mom who enjoys teaching math and wants to share her ideas. Both of these blogs post news and research articles about math ed, links to sites with teaching resources, book reviews, and other thoughts about ideas in math education. The Math Education Research Blog also shares lots of good information about math education internationally, which I think will be beneficial for me as a teacher to find fresh ideas from countries other than the U.S. Another site I found, Math Shortcut, features printable math worksheets, lesson plan ideas, and links to online math games for students. Click here to see my public page on these resources from Google reader.

RSS definitely has potential to help me keep my thumb on the most up to date information, resources, and ideas in education. Not every good resource site has RSS feeds, as I found while searching for math ed websites, but many blogs and some sites do frequently post links to sites with useful tools and fresh lesson ideas. I definitely see benefits in checking out sites that others in my field recommend. I can use RSS to stay up to date on education news and research articles to further my professional development and knowledge of what is happening in the education field. To share information with parents, once I've created a strong collection of teaching resource feeds I'll be able to easily share information with parents concerned about some aspect of their child's education, or who just want to know more. For example, using my collection of feeds on math education, I can provide resources and ideas to parents of students either struggling in math or needing math enrichment activities to challenge them. For more technologically aware parents, I can encourage them to subscribe to RSS feeds of websites I've found, class blogs, or even my own blogs as well. I can see RSS as a great communication tool.

On another note, I set up an iGoogle this week, which I'm using to keep Google reader, Gmail, and Blogger all in one place. I also set up a calendar and even a moon phases widget, which is useful for some of the things I'm doing in SME 301 right now. I also subscribed to a couple color guard websites to stay up to date on that information. I'm hoping to add a few more of my own personal feeds to my reader soon.

Notable Education Blogs

This blog, the Class of Ambrose,was created by a 5th grade teacher at a school in Detroit. I took the time to look through this blog mostly because it came from a Michigan school in a grade I am interested in teaching. This teacher has clearly made good use of this blog to provide his students with information and resources to benefit their learning. Some of the early posts provide information for both students and parents with clear instructions on how to use blogs, along with links to other important technology. For example the teacher posted a link and instructions for families to download Firefox for their computers. Other things I liked about this blog were the posts announcing upcoming test dates and project due dates with study information included, descriptions of the GLCEs for 5th grade and the applicable GLCE for each topic they studied, and YouTube videos of lessons he had done in class for students to re-watch should they need a refresher on the material covered. I like how he lets his students know so much about the GLCEs and lets them see exactly which GLCEs they are covering in class and when. The YouTube videos seem to be a particularly useful tool for math, giving students the opportunity to see a math lesson a second time. He also provides his students with other math help resources.

The next blog, Simply Teaching, is written by a New Hampshire 4th grade teacher, posting his experiences in teaching and providing advice and ideas to other teachers. He focuses a lot of his posts around ideas for teaching that meant to be simple, but useful and effective. He provides price and product information from Amazon.com for many of the resources he uses, his goal being to show items that teachers can get for their classrooms that are less expensive. Other posts provide reviews of books he has used in his classroom, both resource books for teachers and fiction and non-fiction books for students. I really liked this aspect of his blog, since I'm always interested in other opinions about good books for children at the grade level I hope to teach. I find that blogs are great places to get the word out about good books, both in education and in general. This is definitely a good blog to check out for ideas on many aspects of teaching.

My New Blog

Welcome to the blog I have created as part of my CEP 416 class, Teaching and Learning with Technology here at Michigan State University. Until about a year ago when blogging was discussed in another one of my education classes I had no idea of the possibilities available through this and other technologies for use in the classroom. I still feel a little bit intimidated by the things I hear about how much technology is changing the face of K-12 education. I have to admit I still feel a little bit tied to more traditional methods of education, like those I grew up with. But if education is changing, then I'm willing to learn whatever I can to change with it.

A few things about me:
I am a junior here at Michigan State in the elementary education program. My integrated teaching minors are English and math. English/Language Arts has always been my favorite subject in school, mostly because I love to read so much. I'm very interested in children's and young adult literature and using literature in the classroom to create cross-curricular connections and open up student's minds to difficult issues. I feel that so many topics can be better understood and become more personal and accessible when placed in the context of a narrative. I'm beginning to see that blogging has huge potential for book discussion, book reviews and recommendations and other uses in the English/Language Arts.

Math is a subject that I don't particularly love for the sake of itself, but through years of hard work at it I became very good at math. I understand the struggles that so many students go through in math and I hope to be the kind of teacher who is competent and confident in my math teaching skills to explain thoroughly and motivate students to work hard in this subject. I'm interested to learn about technologies that I can use to help students engage in math and help them understand it better.

Outside of academics, the activity that consumes a great deal of my life is color guard. I have been a member of the color guard in the Spartan Marching Band here at MSU for the past three years. This winter is also my third season as a member of State of Art, MSU's winterguard team. For those unfamiliar with it, winterguard is a competitive activity that basically takes the color guard from the fall marching band and places them indoors in a gymnasium without the band, performing shows to recorded music that are much more intricate and dance oriented than outdoor marching band shows. I'm very excited because this year State of Art will be attending the world championship for winterguard for the first time. This event will be held in Dayton, OH on April 2-4, 2009. Our first competition is this coming Saturday, January 24 at Northview High School in Grand Rapids. Wish us luck! To find out more about these activities, here are some sites to visit:

State of Art
Spartan Marching Band
Michigan Color Guard Circuit (MCGC)
Winterguard International (WGI)