Digital Storytelling

                                                                                                                                                                                                    
Digital storytelling is a way that people can use technology to tell their stories- whether it be about their own life or something educational.  For teachers, the latter seems to be the most beneficial, because there are endless opportunities that we can incorporate this tool to teach a lesson or have students create their projects.  Digital storytelling is typically based upon a theme or overall message, and this is one way that we as teachers can use this in our lessons.   Digital Stories help an educator explain different concepts, ease some lessons that may be difficult for the students, introduce vocabulary, and ask an array of questions to promote students thinking skills. As an educator, we should always be looking for different ways that one can incorporate technology to education.  So I suggest you do consider using some form of digital storytelling.


One of the different forms of digital storytelling that I would like to share with you today is VoiceThread.  This form of technology allows a teacher to use anything from pictures, audio, video or text and they vary in length of times.  VoiceThreads allow the students to interact with each other and develop higher levels of thinking skills and technology awareness.  Students can use the many tools it has such as doodling, where they can use the pen to point to certain areas that they are talking about. You can design a VoiceThread to model a lesson you are teaching, for example my lesson on the months of the year that I have mentioned in my past posts.


After much brainstorming of how I could possibly use this technology into my unit plan, I created my activity plan and decided to focus on the seasons of the year and teaching them through the VoiceThread I have created.  As you can see, each slide is focusing on one season, and asking the students some HOTS questions that allows them to interact with each other.  That is one good thing to keep in mind- don't use one answer questions when creating a voice thread, make sure the students have some sort of thinking they must go through in order to answer the questions. One thing I like from the VoiceThread is that students can respond in different ways.  They can comment, input their voice, or draw on the pictures to answer the questions. 


I definitely will be incorporating this new found technology into my future lesson plans.  It is such a great way to introduce a lesson and even use it as a follow up activity for when students are finished with their work.  It's a great source and it is available for everyone to use... so why not use it?