Digital StorytellingI chose to make a digital story about the cell cycle. This is one of the next topics that we cover in class. As in a lot of biology topics, this is a very visual topic where we look to see the cell dividing and pulling apart it's chromosomes.
First, I created a storyboard for my digital story. I used bubbl.us; however, I'm not a real fan of that program. I use Inspiration more often. But, I realize that bubbl.us is free and web-based. So, I guess it will work.
Then, I downloaded and opened Photo Story to begin my digital story. Well, since I am doing this a little "last-minute," I didn't have access to all the digital images of cell division that I wished I had. And, looking at the ones available on Picassa and Flickr, I think that I might actually have students take photos while we go through the cell division unit and have them create their own digital stories of the cell cycle. Anyway, it was just easier for me to grab family photos that I already had saved on my computer. So, I made a family digital story project about what happened with our family during 2008.
Once I made and saved the story, I tried to go and put it on my Weebly site, but something was wrong with Weebly (they were "fixing" something). So, I created a Voice Thread account, created a project, and uploaded my story there. So, I think that this is the link that you need to see the story:
The feedback that I got was mostly about the time spent on each slide and some of the transitions. I realized after creating the story that you can control the amount of time spent on each slide (clearly I should have messed around more with the first few images). I did go and chance the time spent on each slide, but that was kind of a pain. I didn't narrate anything since I hate listening to my recorded voice, and my microphone is tucked away in the basement right now. But, I think that students might like narrating it (they constantly ask me to "Jing" things just so they can be really loud and then listen to themselves on the playback).
Digital Storytelling in My Classroom
As I mentioned earlier, I can see a great opportunity for a digital story telling project in some of my units like the cell cycle, photosynthesis, cellular respiration, etc... Actually, this would make a great project for those topics because, to be honest, those topics are sometimes not exactly the most exciting things that we cover in the course of the year. So, this would be a nice way to add some excitement. And, in doing so, I think that students might really learn the material if they needed to manipulate the information and create a story out of it.
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