digital storytelling – iLearn Technology

Adobe Spark: Easily create and share videos, images, and newsletters

January 2, 2017Kelly Tenkely2 Comments9484 views

What it is: Adobe Spark is a collection of fantastic (free!) creative tools available online or as an app download.

Create social graphics that are stunning and easy to share (you know the kind: flyers, memes, posters, ads). The example above took under 2min to create and share! 🙂
Make beautiful web stories for event recaps, newsletters, photo journals, portfolios, etc.
Produce and share impressive videos for storytelling, projects, or to share to social media.

If you (or your students) are feeling a lack of creativity, there is even a bank of inspiration that will get you started! This is particularly helpful for your students who struggle with a place to start but are brilliant with a little nudge. Whether you begin with inspiration or not, you’ll be feeling an extra burst of creativity in no time.

How to integrate Adobe Spark in the classroom: The collection of tools in Adobe Spark are perfect for students and teachers alike. Students can use these tools to create book reviews, to document science experiments, for storytelling, to explain their inquiry process, as an eportfolio, to illustrate math concepts, and so much more! These tools will help your students take their learning and present it in a way that is both visually powerful, and easy to share.

Teachers, you can use Adobe Spark to create a weekly newsletter (SO easy to share home with parents!), create photo journals of class events or field trips, to create writing and thinking prompts to share with students, quotes, presentations, and announcements. The photo journal would be a great way to give families a glimpse into your classroom, if you’re like me, your phone is FULL of pictures at the end of each week! If you have a class social media channel on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube- Adobe Spark is about to take it to the next level of awesomeness!

I love the way that Adobe Spark has made digital storytelling that much easier to create and share. This is a site that you’ll want to bookmark for easy access, and put on all of your students devices if you have a one-to-one environment.

Tips: If you have laptops, the web version of Adobe Spark is best, otherwise download the app!

My Simple Show: Create your own explainer videos for free!

September 22, 2016Kelly Tenkely2 Comments7849 views

What it is: My Simple Show Video Creator lets students easily create professional level “explainer” videos. The finished product looks just like a Common Craft video, so cool! The step-by-step tool helps students think about storyline and the flow of explaining a concept.

How to integrate My Simple Show into the classroom: My Simple Show is a fantastic option for digital storytelling. Students begin by choosing to write their own script, or by uploading a Power Point presentation. Next, they can choose from one of many templates to start from, or alternately, start from scratch. The templates are an awesome option because they give kids an outline and break down the story telling/explaining process. For each step in the process, it guides students with a prompt and with some examples. My Simple Show auto-magically picks up words in the script and suggests pictures. Students can use the pre-selected images, choose an image from the My Simple Show library of images, or upload their own image or picture. In the final step, students add audio. This can be computer generated or students can record their own audio. The finished product is pretty impressive! Below is a video I made quickly today.

My Simple Show’s obvious use is for explanatory digital storytelling, but it would also be a great way for students to reflect on a field trip, tell a story, retell new learning (pssst. this is an awesome way to check for understanding!), or create their own “textbooks.”

Students can use My Simple Show to explain a historical event, introduce a biological process, introduce a physical law, summarize literature, summarize a biography, discuss pros and cons, explain a law, etc. Use My Simple Show to create whole class stories where each student contributes a portion of the explanation or story. This type of video can be made over a few weeks using classroom devices as a writing center. This would be a fun way to create an A to Z type book of learning, reflections by students after a unit, a 100 day video, fact vs. opinion video, a class video of poems, a phonics video, or a class video about a field trip that students took. Students can take pictures of science experiments and create a digital video detailing the experiment with text, images, and student voice reflections included. The finished product can be shared with parents and families easily through YouTube, Vimeo, or downloaded as a MP4 file.

For a back to school night activity, take a picture of each student to add to a class video and record students sharing an explanation of a school day. This same idea could be used in preparation for parent-teacher conferences. Students can create a video about their learning during the quarter/trimester, record thoughts about why they are proud of the work they did, and add reflections. These can be shared as a starting point for conferences, at the end of the conference, parents have a keepsake. My Simple Show could also be used for character education. Give the students a scenario or problem, and have them work out a step-by-step explanation or solution.

Because of the voice recording capabilities, My Simple Show, would be a great way for students to practice a foreign language. They can illustrate a word or phrase accompanied by the audio. Classes could work together to create a “living” digital glossary.

Be sure to give your students access to My Simple Show in your Maker Space, it is a great option for students to choose!

Tips: My Simple Show has video guides that lead students through each step of the process…I definitely recommend watching these at least once as a class or for the first round of creation!

Soo Meta: Digital Storytelling Tool

April 10, 2013April 15, 2013Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment3078 views

What it is: Soo Meta is an awesome new site that lets students build mixed media stories. Students can use this storytelling tool to collect, sort, edit and publish web content easily.

There are two options for login, with name/email/password or through Facebook. For students who don’t have their own email accounts, you can have them login using a temporary inbox like Tempinbox (just type in a word or words followed by @tempinbox.com and you are in business!).

After students have logged in, they will be asked to enter a title for their new story. Then, they can search for videos, pictures, sounds and text or copy and paste their links into a new story. Videos can be trimmed and edited, pictures resized and text edited.

Soo Meta is incredibly simple to use. Just search the web, choose content to remix and off you go! You can also simply drag and drop content from your computers desktop to create something new.

When finished, just publish the story and you can share it via link on Facebook or Twitter or you can embed the story like I did above. (I literally spent a grand total of 2 min creating this story!)

How to integrate Soo Meta into the classroom: Soo Meta is a fantastic online tool for digital storytelling. It makes the process incredibly easy and the possibilities are limited only to your student’s imagination.

With Soo Meta, students can compile research on any topic or subject and create their own digital “textbook” of the learning to share with other classmates or students around the world. I love that Soo Meta combines the research component with the creation piece. So often students want to skip right to creation…with Soo Meta the two are so interdependent, it would be impossible to do one without the other!

Teachers can use Soo Meta to create learning stories for their students. Pull together various videos, pictures and articles and mash them up for your students. Embed finished video stories on a classroom website or blog.

Older students can create interactive video stories for younger “buddy” students. They can solidify their own learning of history, math, science, geography, etc. by putting together learning opportunities for younger students.

The storytelling aspect of Soo Meta is fantastic! Students can do story re-tells, current event mashups, historical documentaries, political commentary, science discoveries, etc.

Tips: Don’t be discouraged if your students are too young to create their own Soo Meta stories, create your own mashups for them to enjoy!

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Leave a comment and tell us how you are using Soo Meta in your classroom.

Story Math: Storytelling and Math

November 2, 2012Kelly Tenkely3 Comments4019 views

What it is: Story Math is a portion of the Hey Math! website. Story Math is a collection of 3 activities that use storytelling to present math in a new way. Students take part in the interactive stories to discover math in new ways, help them learn new math vocabulary and understand concepts more completely. There are currently three story activities available on Story Math: Mystery on the Block (students join the Premium Private Investigators and discover that geometry holds the key to the mystery of the missing kittens); The Perfect Arrangement (where students are introduced to permutations and how one clever lady uses math to subdue some squabbling scholars); and A Suitable Partner (where students engage in river-crossing puzzles to help Cammue pass the King’s test and marry Bindu).

How to integrate Story Math into the classroom: Storytelling is powerful! I believe that we are all wired for story. We yearn for it, it helps us to connect with the world around us. Story Math takes the power of storytelling and applies it to math. Through story, students see math concepts unfold and discover connections between math concept and math application. In addition to the story, Story Math includes games and activities where students can practice putting the math they have learned to the test.

Story Math makes a great introduction into new math concepts. Story Math can be used whole-class with an interactive whiteboard or projector-connected computer. Students can take turns reading (mute it for this option because the text is read automatically). The story can be paused along the bottom while students discuss the stories and the math in the stories. Each story invites interaction, provide students with an opportunity to interact with the story. After the story, discuss what math connections were made. How can they be applied? What new vocabulary was learned? Follow up with the games/activities on classroom computers as a center activity, or again as a whole class on the interactive whiteboard.

Want to do one better? Show your students Story Math, ask them to explore each of the stories and make notes about the math concept introduced, the vocabulary and the story. Then have students take a math concept that they are learning, and ask them to create a story of their own. The first thing they should do is decide on the math concept they want to teach and the vocabulary that is associated. Next, they should create a storyboard of what will happen in their story. Finally, they can create the story animation using a tool like GoAnimate, Kerpoof Movie, Zimmer Twins or an app like Sock Puppets or ToonTastic.

Tips: The stories on Story Math take a few minutes to load. They are flash based and require a little patience for the first load.

Leave a comment and tell us how you are using Story Math in your classroom.

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Qwiki Creator: Create the textbook of the future with a few clicks

June 28, 2012Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment3976 views

Play the Qwiki: Anastasis Academy

What it is: I first wrote about Qwiki in 2010 when they launched their search service. I just got word that you (and your students) can now create your very own Qwiki. When students search using Qwiki, instead of coming up with a list of links to websites, images, and videos, a slide show of images and videos begins complete with computer voice narration. It is truly an incredible experience.

With Qwiki Creator, it is easy to create your own Qwiki to share. Creating a Qwiki is really easy and intuitive. First, you find the content and media you want to add to your Qwiki. This could be web content, video, images, maps, content from your computer, text or even a tweet. Next you add narration and set your timing. Finally you can preview your Qwiki and publish it. I created the Qwiki above in about 5 min.

If you are looking for the original Qwiki, you can get to it at http://qwiki.com/reference.

How to integrate Qwiki Creator into the classroom: Qwiki Creator is a fantastic way for students to create impressive presentations about their learning. Students can quickly create mashups of web content and record or type narration to demonstrate understanding of material. Qwiki Creator is also a great tool for teachers, create customized content for your students. This is textbook 2.0 for sure! It can be tailored to the exact needs of your curriculum and can become an additional way for your to “flip” your classroom.

I love the idea of students creating their own digital textbooks as they learn about a subject. Throughout their learning and research, students can keep a table of contents of items they want to be sure to include in their Qwiki. Students can create a Qwiki about the information they have learned, add text/voice/video narration to help describe the learning and publish it for classmates to learn from. The Qwiki can be shared easily or embeded on a student blog or website.

Create your own series of Qwiki’s for your classroom blog or website where students can further their learning. They can access any of the websites or resources you include in your Qwiki for a majorly upgraded version of a webquest.

Qwiki Creator could be used for digital storytelling. Students can find images, videos and maps that help them tell their story and narrate the creative story for others to enjoy.

In a foreign language class, students can give a web tour where they narrate in the language they are learning. This would also be neat to do in a geography or history class.

If you teach students who are younger than 13, consider creating Qwiki’s as a class using an interactive whiteboard and teacher account. Students can help put the Qwiki together and the finalized Qwiki can be put on a class blog or website for students to learn from any time.

Tips: Students must be 13 years old or older to use Qwiki Creator according to the Terms of Service.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Qwiki Creator in your classroom!

Little Bird Tales

February 25, 2011Kelly Tenkely6 Comments4647 views

What it is: I am late on this post, but it is too good to skip a mention! Little Bird Tales is a new way to digital story tell with primary students. With Little Bird Tales, students can upload their own artwork, record their voice, add text and email their finished creations to family and friends. Sign up on Little Bird Tales requires an email address for verification purposes. This can be a parent or teacher email address (the site is geared for 3 to 14-year-old children so a student address is not necessary). Little Bird Tales includes a built-in art pad where students can create pictures online. They also have the option to upload photographs and images they have created offline. Each page give students a place to add a picture, text and voice recording. Finished books can be saved and accessed online or sent via email.

How to integrate Little Bird Tales into the classroom: Little Bird Tales is a brilliant option for digital storytelling in the primary classroom. I love that it includes both online and offline student creations, as well as student voice recordings. Students can use Little Bird Tales for creative writing and imaginative stories, as a way to reflect on learning, or as a keepsake for parents. Students can take pictures of science experiments and create a digital science journal detailing the experiment with text and student voice reflections included.

Use Little Bird Tales to create whole class stories where each student contributes a page. This type of book can be made over a few weeks using classroom computers as a writing center. This would be a fun way to create an A to Z type book of learning, reflections by students after a unit, a 100 day book, fact vs. opinion book, an interactive glossary, a class book of poems, a phonics book, or a class book about a field trip that students took. The finished product can be shared with parents and families easily through an email. For a back to school night activity, take a picture of each student to add to a class book and record students sharing what their favorite part of the school day is. This same idea could be used in preparation for parent-teacher conferences. Students can upload pictures of their best school work, record thoughts about why they are proud of the work they did, and add reflections in the text field. These can be shared as a starting point for conferences, at the end of the conference, parents have a keepsake.

Because of the voice recording capabilities, Little Bird Tales, would be a great way for students to practice a foreign language. They can illustrate a word or phrase accompanied by the audio. Classes could work together to create a “living” digital glossary.

Do you have a planned absence coming? Why not create a digital story that your substitute can share with students? Upload pictures that support learning, text, and your voice.

Tips: If you have parent email addresses in Google, Yahoo, or Outlook, they can be directly imported into Little Bird Tales as contacts.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Little Bird Tales in your classroom!

Picture a Story: Digital Storytelling

October 13, 2010Kelly Tenkely9 Comments4000 views

What it is: As I mentioned a few days ago, I am starting a virtual classroom/club for digital storytelling. I have been on the lookout for great resources, I listed my favorites here, and now I am remembering a lot of tools I left off of my original list (like Toon Doo!). Today as I was going through my Google Reader, I learned about this gem from Richard Byrne’s Free Tech for Teachers. The Delaware Art Museum has provided a great website dedicated to storytelling. The tagline is “bringing visual art to life through stories”. On the site, students can picture a story, experience a story, or tell a story. The Picture a Story was the most intriguing portion for me, as it provides a great tool for telling a digital story. First, students choose a genre of story that they want to tell, next they choose a famous painting background for their story, students add characters (also from famous works of art), props, and then tell the story. In the tell the story section, students type out the story. If a microphone is available, students can even record the story in their own voice. When students have completed their story, it can be shared via email.

How to integrate Picture a Story into your curriculum: Stories are powerful. I love the way that Picture a Story weaves together famous works of art with story. It teaches students to reflect on the art that they encounter and think about the stories that it represents. Picture a Story is a great way to discuss genre, characters, and parts of a story. It is also a fantastic way to bring a little art history into your classroom. It would be a neat class experiment to have students choose all the same genre, background, characters, and props and, without talking to others, write their story. After students are finished they can share their stories with the class. Students will learn about perspective, creativity, and voice as they listen to all the different stories that originated from the same picture. If you don’t have access to a computer lab, this activity could be done with an interactive whiteboard or projector connected computer and students writing on paper. Let your students experiment with story and share their finished pieces with each other. Picture a story is ideal in a lab setting where each student has access to their own computer. If that isn’t a possibility, you could also have students visit Picture a Story on classroom computers as a storytelling center. The site is quick to navigate through and students can tell a story in a sentence or a few paragraphs making it a good center. If students don’t have access to email or can’t email the finished product to you, have them take a screenshot of the story to save in a digital portfolio or to print out.

Tips: The teacher section of this site has some great lesson ideas for every grade level.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Picture a Story in your classroom!

31 of My Favorite Digital Storytelling Sites

October 11, 2010Kelly Tenkely33 Comments19778 views

I am working on starting a virtual classroom…actually when it is all said and done, it will look more like a virtual club. I have opened up my virtual classroom to students in 3rd-8th grade. My first offering is going to be digital storytelling. In honor of that, I thought I would share the sites I am going to use with the students, as well as some other favorites for digital storytelling.

1. Google Search Stories Video Creator– This is a YouTube site that lets you create a digital story out of a series of Google Searches, you really have to check it out to get the full effect!

2. PicLits– This is an all time favorite of mine, PicLits lets students choose a picture and then draw from a word bank to create a sentence or story to accompany the picture.

3. Domo Animate- This is my favorite story animation tool. It gives students so much flexibility and freedom in telling their story, the results are amazing!

4. StoryBird- This site lets students create stories based on beautiful illustrations by real artists; better yet, it lets students create stories collaboratively!

5. Animoto– The free version of Animoto lets students create 30 second videos that combine images, songs, and text. It combines them all for an impressive presentation without a lot of fuss.

6. ZooBurst- ZooBurst is one that I haven’t used with students yet but I am excited to. ZooBurst is a new site that lets students create virtual 3D popup books. Even better, it lets students print out a special marker and view their popup book augmented reality style as it comes to life using a webcam!

I couldn’t fit in all of my favorite digital storytelling tools into a 5 week class, here are some more favorites:

7. Myths and Legends

8. Shidonni– One of my students very favorite websites of all time, this one gets requested a lot!

9. Smile Box

10. Kerpoof– another student favorite!

11. Glogster

12. Creaza

13. Voice Thread

14. Graphic Novel Creator- Comic Master

15. Stage’d

16. ePub Bud– publish ebooks for ebook readers like the iPad

17. Virsona– a different kind of digital storytelling but neat none the less!

18. Zimmer Twins– one of my students very favorite ways to tell a story!

19. Fotobabble

20. Picture Book Maker

21. Nota– collaborative workspace

22. My Story Maker

23. Xtranormal

24. Do Ink

25. Piki Kids Comic Creator

26. Bubblr!

Sites to get students writing:

27. Lightening Bug

28. What-if questions for stories

29. The Story Starter Jr. -Created by my friend Joel Heffner!

30. The Story Starter- Also created by Joel!

31. PinBall-bounce ideas around

Stage’d

May 4, 2010May 4, 2010Kelly Tenkely10 Comments4834 views

What it is: I am constantly learning about cool new website tools for the classroom from my PLN (Personal Learning Network), today I learned about an animated comic creator called Stage’d from fellow Blogging Alliance member @MrR0gers. Stage’d is a tool that helps students to tell digital stories in a new 3-d way. Students can create a stage full of characters and dialogue as if they are directing their own digital play. They can choose characters, costumes, animations, set design and provide characters with dialog. When the 3-d comic has been saved, it can be emailed or linked to with a unique url. Stage’d is perfect for use in any classroom, to save a comic requires no personal identifying information or even an email address. All students have to do is type in the name of the director (first name only or a pseudonym).

How to integrate Stage’d into the classroom: Stage’d is a seriously fun creation tool, students are going to love directing their own 3-d comic plays. Stage’d makes a great digital story telling tool.

Students can:

Publish their own fiction (or non-fiction) writing pieces as a 3-d play
Re-tell a story to demonstrate comprehension
Illustrate vocabulary words
Illustrate historical events
Create mock public service announcements
Create mocumentaries
“Interview” an important person of interest
Create short persuasive video commercials
Illustrate story problems in math
Practice a foreign language dialogue and vocabulary

Stage’d is very easy to use and the results are absolutely fantastic. Create your own Stage’d creations to introduce a new topic or concept to your students. This is a fun introduction that will grab their attention in a hurry.

Tips: The creators of Stage’d are constantly adding new features and options so check back often.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Stage’d in your classroom.

Fotobabble

March 23, 2010Kelly Tenkely10 Comments6195 views

What it is: Fotobabble seems to be everywhere I am lately, and now that I have had a minute to play with it, I can see why. Just upload a photo, record your voice, and send or embed away. It is very simple to use and has really fun results! The only downside for use in education are: 1. on the home page of Fotobabble you can see other members creations, at the time of writing they are all clean but I would hate to send my kids here without knowing exactly what content they would run into; 2. To use Fotobabble as a student, you must first sign up. This requires an email address 🙁 Which means that under the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, that children under the age of 13 cannot sign up for an account on the site for their own creations. I would love to see Fotobabble create an education version that can be used by students under 13 if monitored and signed up by an adult, and without the other user generated content on the home page. That being said, Fotobabble is a fantastic tool for the classroom.

How to integrate Fotobabble into the classroom: Fotobabble can be used in a variety of ways in the classroom. For students over 13, it is a great creation tool. Students could take pictures, or find creative commons images that illustrate vocabulary that they are learning and record themselves saying the definition and using the word in a sentence. Students could collect and trade Fotobabble vocabulary with other students in the class and embed them in a blog or wiki to create their own visual talking dictionary. If you teach students younger than 13, have teachers or parent helpers build audio visual dictionaries that can be added to throughout the year. How neat would it be to have a talking, visual word wall?! This would be helpful for math, science, social studies, history, and regular vocabulary words that students learn. The format will be so valuable to your audio and visual learners. Did you take pictures of that field trip? Upload them to Fotobabble and students can record thoughts, observations, and lessons they learned on the field trip. Consider creating a class Fotobabble account that you (the teacher) are in charge of. Upload student illustrations and record a story that they have written using their own voice. This is the perfect type of project to share at parent teacher conference time. Parents can get a good idea of their child’s writing, reading, and fine motor skills all in one spot. If you complete a similar project several times through the year, both students and parents can see the growth and progress that has been made during the school year. Fotobabbles are an outstanding way to send your young students on an Internet scavenger hunt. Along the way, record directions with Fotobabble and embed on your class website, wiki, or blog. Non-readers will be able to listen to, and follow directions for any assignment. Upload a picture of a landmark or map and have students record fun facts that they have learned about the place. Send special messages from your class home to parents in the weekly newsletter. Take a picture of a project that the class has done, or of a fun activity from the week. Students can record a message about upcoming events, fun highlights of the week in learning, and a list of helpers who have signed up for the week. Parents will love hearing their kids give the news updates for the week! Are you wracking your brain for a fun Mother’s/Father’s day activity? Why not record the kids leaving a special message to their parent with a special picture made just for them? Now that is a keepsake!

Tips: Because younger students can’t sign up for their own Fotobabble account, consider creating a class account that you can be in control of. For younger students, having a Fotobabble recording center set up on one of the classroom computers might be appropriate. Since you will control the account, you will be in charge of what content is added by students.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Fotobabble in your classroom.