Digital Storytelling

I am getting excited to work on my digital storytelling project.  After seeing the students reaction to the Animoto I created, I just know the digital storytelling project will have an even bigger impact on them.  I bet some of the students might even feel inspired to try their own digital story telling project.  This class has truly changed my thinking on how I have been integrating technology into my classroom. However, to catapult students into the 21st century, I am thinking about integrating some of the tools I have learned from this class into my professional goal for next year. Just trying to keep up with the times!!

RSS

In my efforts to understand Really Simple Syndication, I typed in a few topics.  I can’t say I know exactly what I am doing, but I am enjoying playing around with Google Reader/RSS feeds.  RSS feeds have really opened my eyes to the many possibilities teachers and students can use to acquire information about a topic.  This would be perfect for my fifth and sixth graders who conduct research for their Big6 project.  According to Richardson, students can actually create RSS feeds that would bring new information about a topic to his or her aggregator as soon as it is published (pg. 79).  The RSS feed is doing all the research and it’s up-to-date.  (This feature would have saved me hours looking for articles while in school.) Now, that our students have acquired information about a topic, it is our job to teach them to skim and scan the information, analyze, and synthesize their readings to prepare them for the 21^st century literacies. However, the issue still remains that there are not enough computers /technology in our schools and not all students have access to a computer and/or Internet when at home.