Digital Storytelling, Copyrights, and Chapter 2 Reflection

Learning about digital storytelling this week really got me thinking about what I can do with them this coming school year. Even though the Science in Plain English examples were made by younger elementary students, my mind went into plan mode and began to think about what middle school students could do. One of the readings this week mentioned that this digital storytelling tool makes the students learn their material well in order to "tell" the story. In my own life, I learn so much more about concepts by teaching them than I have from just reading/writing about them. I think that using this tool for those hard to learn concepts like the Nitrogen Cycle or the Carbon Cycle would be great. I can also see my 8th graders working through digital storytelling to share what they learned about acids and bases. I think that having this tool replace some lab reports would be fun for the students as well. All required parts of the lab report could be told: problem, hypothesis, materials, procedures, data, analysis, and conclusion. I am foreseeing great creativity here! a mixture of colorful drawings and actual pictures of the process and outcomes. Actually, I have been in "teacher-mode" the past two hours regarding a severe thunderstorm that passed through here. As I watched it move in, hit, and leave, I wondered how I could make this into a digital story. Fortunately I was home but did not want to go outside to take pictures with all the wind and hail. I did save some hail stones and put them in the freezer, so maybe I will create a simple digital story about the effects of a wind and hail storm and post them here...stay tuned.

I read a lot of information about copyright this week and I can't get the following question out of my head...why doesn't my school spend a short amount of time during our first inservice day before school officially starts to go over what is new and what teachers can and cannot do. I think most undergrad teacher ed programs require a technology class. I don't remember learning about most of what I read over the past few days in that class. Our school technology teacher doesn't even go over this info with our students. Yikes! How many of you out there have had training on this from your tech dept at your school?
The Creative Commons site does have a lot of great pictures and I think it will be a great teaching tool to show students how to properly use and cite sources. I am curious to see if our district allows this site or if it is blocked due to the ability to blog and add comments.

And finally....I will keep this part shorter...Chapter 2 gives us many useful ideas how to incorporate what we are learning in this class to our lessons. I won't give in to the details about what I highlighted and read, (round 2 of storm is here and I want to hurry in case power goes out) but I am anxious to play with some items. I use Vernier for data collection, and I can't wait to do some screen capturing and better teaching with this program. Also, I want to try a virtual tree/leaf collection at the beginning of the school year. And...showing pictures and videos of what is safe and what is not safe in the lab is something I really would like to put together this summer so I can show it the first week of school...ok so thunder really loud so I am quitting and hopefully met my reflection requirement...maybe I will venture out and take some pics for a digital story...