Welcome to our new subscribers. If you want to catch up on some great ideas for using Web 2.0 tools or short films in the English classroom, visit our blog here to view all our previous posts. In our last missive we discussed Web 2.0 tools for collaborative online debating. Over our next few bulletins we will look at tools to use for digital story telling.
Digital story telling, as its name implies, is any way we can tell a story in a digital format - be it via digital text, audio, images or video (or a mashup of all of these things). For English teachers interested in the Web 2.0, digital storytelling is a big focus. The better we can use Web 2.0 digital storytelling tools, the more likely it is we can engage students with shaping and sharing their stories and developing their literacy skills.
There are two blogs that are great resources for exploring the world of digital story telling. The first is Ozge Karaoglu's blog which can be found here. Throughout 2009 and 2010 Ozge listed a 100 tools for digital story telling and his list can be found here. Another useful site is Alan Levine's 50 Web 2.0 Ways to Tell A Story.
However, we don't want to overwhelm you with the myriad ways you can tell a story digitally. So here's two quick things can try in class to begin with.
One Word is a speed writing web 2.0 tool. When you bring up the site it simply provides you with a button to click. When you click on the button it will give you a randomly supplied word, a box and 60 seconds to write on the word you're given. Once the 60 seconds is over you are only allowed to finish the sentence you are on. Once you've finished you're prompted to supply your name and email address, and your 60 second piece of writing is published on the web and you can share the link with everyone in class to look at.
There's a few different things you can do with this tool in class. Firstly, you can just use it as a straight out speedwriting tool - here's the prompt, how much can you write about it in 60 seconds? But you could also move past this onto narrative elements. The random word could be the key part of a story complication. You might say to students that they all have to start with the prompt, 'It was an ordinary day for [insert name] when [continue on with a problem based on the random prompt]'. Or you could use the random word as the basis for some interesting problem solving, such as: 'The key to solving the world's problems is [insert random word here...] because...'
If you've ever used Microsoft Photostory, then Photopeach is a similar product, but just online. If you've never used Photostory, then it is a tool that enables you to easily put pictures into a slide show and add text captions and music. Photopeach can be used for free online. Students won't need to create an account, but will need to supply their name and an email address to create a new photopeach story. Students can quickly upload pictures and then caption them.
What can you do with this tool? One idea is to find 6 or so loosely associated digital pictures and share them with your students. Challenge your students to create a story from these - first by putting the pictures into some kind of order that tells a story, and then by identifying what might be the orientation, complication, crisis and resolution. They can upload them to Photopeach, caption the pictures to tell the story, and then share the story with everyone. To add to the challenge, you might also supply 2-3 key words they must use in their story.
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