I feel like although I have had many great experiences in this class, I personally struggled to find inspiration in how I was going to apply these amazing new ideas to my classroom. It seemed like with each new experience, voice thread, blogging, and ning (online role-play),in the back of my mind I kept thinking "first and second graders can't do this!" Well, I was wrong.
I was looking for links for my last post and came across this site. It is from a school in Georgetown, Kentucky and it completely flattened my pessimistic attitude. There are amazing examples of digital storytelling done by first and second graders. Watching the great work these kids have done inspires me to want to do this with my kids! The project called "What is love?" by a first grade class is heart warming. The project titled "Are you proud to be an American?" is also done by a first grader! Again, amazing. I want to know what software they used. It seems like a voice thread of some sort, but it is different. Does anyone know?
In my Writer's Workshop we have sharing time. It always seems to be the same kids who want to share and the same kids who don't. Using a program like this, would allow kids to compose a piece, use their voice to share and present it to the class in a way that would be less stressful. Students would need to think about who their audience would be and could come up with topics that are meaningful to them. I have students in the past who do not like to illustrate their work. Using digital storytelling would allow them to bring in photographs and other images. This could eliminate the frustration of adding drawings. On the flip side of that, I have also had many struggling writers. I often find them spending hours on these elaborate illustrations, filled with so many details, but no words to tell the story. Using digital storytelling, they could show their images and tell the story instead of stressing about getting it down on paper.
I would be very interested in seeing where my kids would take this...I think that I would be surprised at what their interests would be.
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9 years ago
Hi Kristin!
ReplyDeleteI looked at the same digital project-the one about being an American done by a first grader. I couldn't believe it. I think we must have found the same resource, which is crazy, when you think of all of the places we could have looked! I also think it would be very neat to have first graders do a digital storytelling project of sorts. Maybe we can talk!
I also think of it as "spicing it up" with first graders. Sometimes I think I need something different to do, so don't they?
What a great find, Kristin. So often the media pieces that primary students make are kept private, but luckily these aren't and they are wonderful.
ReplyDeleteI think that Photo Story (the software that Maria & Molly used last week) would work for these type so projects.
It is so good to see authentic first grade digitalized writing--definitely an inspiration! I also wonder if you could use some of the collaborative writing techniques from the Bledsoe article? As an intermediate teacher, I really felt his experiences rang true--and doable at some level.
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