After our two day workshop on Digital Storytelling with Dr. Helen Barrett and Erin Barrett a group of Chimacum High and Middle School teachers create digital stories. I really enjoyed and appreciate the idea of creating digital stories that are narrated by the author. They are much more personal that way and sound great. Most of the teachers at the workshop created incredible stories about their families, tributes, and stories about who they are so they can introduce themselves and digital storytelling to their students. It was very powerful. And now that we know how to make our own it will be that much easier to show our students how to start so they can take off and create their own digital stories. I chose to make mine about the salmon life cycle because it seemed like a fun way to introduce salmon to my 6th graders when we study freshwater ecology. Before taking this workshop I attempted what could be a digital story to show my advisory group how they could make one for their electronic portfolio for student-led conferences but I didn’t do as much narrating as was recommended in our workshop. I created a video of my dreams as a teacher and my students create dream books while a few actually tried to create dream videos like mine.
Here is the salmon life cycle:
Dr. Barrett has a Digital Storytelling site full of resources for having students create their own digital stories. Creating digital stories are a valuable component of electronic portfolios as well. What a great way to get ready for school. I’m excited to try this with my students.
