The New and Improved Digital Story

After sharing my Digital Story with my colleagues last week they offered some suggestions for improvement.  Seeing as though I was looking for ways to make it better I took their constructive criticism and went back into iMovie to change some things around.  The first this I needed to do was to change the position of the pictures.  I was unaware that when you put them into iMovie you have to choose a starting and ending position.  I had mentioned in my last post that I didn't like how the pictures were cut off or didn't show the whole scene, but apparently that is because I had to position them!  So I went back and changed all of the pictures I felt needed re-positioning. The second thing I did was decide to add some music to the background.  When I tried this at first I felt it was too loud and therefore too distracting.  However, again I learned that as the creator you can change how loud or soft the music plays.  I lowered the volume to a setting that I thought added just enough background music, without taking away from the content that was being taught.

My experience with creating a Digital Story and with using iMovie has taught me two valuable things.  First and foremost, ask questions! Even when you think there is no way to change something you don't like about your Digital Story or iMovie, there usually is.  Second, take risks!  Try to include pictures or use formats that you may not be 100% sold on, because it's surprising how well some elements fit together.  It is very easy to edit and change things if you don't love how they turned out at first.  You just have to get in there and play around with the settings. 

  

Without further ado, here is the new and improved digital story on The Steps of Human Hearing.

Digital Storytelling

If I had to guess I would say that every teacher reads books aloud to their students.  Teacher read to their students to provide them with information, share a story, or purely to entertain them.  As research has shown, there is  much instructional value to read alouds with students of all ages.  That being said, make way for a new way of sharing stories with your students, Digital Storytelling.  As you may have inferred from the name, digital storytelling is using technology to share a story with an audience.  They are different from regular read alouds because they are digitally played for students, provide pictures, video clips and sounds, and a very enjoyable and engaging. 

Digital Storytelling can be done using many different programs such as Storybird, Voicethread, or iMovie.  Each one of these programs offers different features, so it really is up to the preference of the author. 

iMovie is one app that can be used to make a digital story.

The first step in creating a digital story is to have a topic or purpose for the final product.  From there, some research may need to be done in order to be knowledgeable about the subject and the content of the story.  A very important step is next, creating the digital storyboard.  This helps the author organize ideas and images, as well as play around with music and transitions.  For someone just starting out, like myself, there are various storyboard templates available on the internet, or one can be created on paper with sticky notes.  From my first experience with digital storytelling, I will admit that initially I thought the storyboard was a waste of time.  However, after going through the entire process, I can tell you that taking the time to create and finesse a storyboard greatly facilitated the actual creation of the story. 

For my digital story I decided to create an informational story explaining the steps to how humans hear.  My reasoning behind this decision is that what I teach the unit on sound, it is always a challenging process for students to visualize.  Therefore, I thought they would really benefit from seeing it explained in a digital story format.  To do this I first used my district’s resources to gathered images of the parts of the ear, both in isolation and as part of the process.  I then created my storyboard using a PowerPoint template. 

Here is my digital storyboard created using a PowerPoint Template

From here I added text, played around with the order of the images, and read through the content various times to ensure it made sense.  I then uploaded all the photos to iMovie, and used the app to record the content explaining each step as it was displayed.  I will say that I had to adjust the time that each picture was displayed in order to fit the text being read.  Also, some of the pictures did not upload looking the same as they did in my camera roll.  However, for a first draft I am pretty pleased.  I am also open to any feedback that I can use to make this digital story better, so I look forward to hearing your thoughts!