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Digital Storytelling

I composed a digital story of part of my trip to the UK during the summer of 2007 using Picasa. In late June and early July Olivia and I traveled to England and Scotland. I was so smitten by Scotland, particularly the city of Edinburgh, that I chose it as the subject of my story. (It must be those Scottish roots in my mother's family - they came over from Scotland in the late 1700s.) Scotland really felt like "home", like I could just pick up and leave the US and live there "happily ever after".

In retrospect, there are many aspects of the trip that I could make into digital stories. For instance, when we were in London, Tony Blair was resigning as PM and Gordon Brown was taking over the office. (Almost three years later Brown has himself resigned.) We were at Buckingham Palace watching the changing of the guard and Blair and Brown's arrival to meet with the Queen was imminent. Press helicopters were flying overhead to catch sight of Blair and Brown's motorcades to the palace. The same day we were at Big Ben, the Houses of Parliament, and Westminster Abbey and there were protests going on against Brown and the Iraq war. I have never been that close to an actual political protest and it was exciting (for a long-time rabble-rouser myself) - history being played out before our very eyes! What a great story that would make if only I were a history teacher (alas).

There were so many wonderful castles and gardens that we visited, I could easily compose several digital stories on those alone. Would that not be great if only I were teaching botany or landscape design! Well, maybe I'll get the opportunity to compose such a story someday for fellow master gardeners.

All in all, Picasa was relatively easy to use. One can choose to insert text captions or voice to accompany photos. I kept my digital story to about 25 or 27 photos although I had many more photos I could have added. Unfortunately, I did not find a way to add music to my story. Perhaps this is not an option in Picasa, with my digital story being more like a web album. I was really hoping to add some bagpipe and Celtic music to accompany my story. So, if any of you out there have any pointers...

Other"Tools" Assignment

Okay, it's the end of the school year and the kids must be rubbing off on me because instead of exploring three of the Other Tools in the assignment, I went to three categories of tools and explored three of each of those, so bear with me while I cover what I've learned.

First, I investigated the "Quizzes and Polls (Surveys) tools" because Mary and I used clickers a few times in the biology classroom this year as well as taking online quizzes and surveys in the library. I visited "eQuizzes" which I registered for. It's a free web-based quizzing program where you can create custom quizzes and monitor student scores. They had a few sample quizzes on there about snow, the presidents, elemental symbols, and US state capitals. (It's always fun to take the sample quizzes to find out if you're really smarter than a 5th-grader!) Then it was on to "Yacapaca" where you can type in your country selector and they will give you sample quizzes from your country on a variety of subjects. There are file quizzes, but you can create your own quizzes with "Yacapaca". They allow you to choose items from quizzes to share with students online, but it seemed like I had to wait a long time for each question to load. That might be a disadvantage for the impatient student. I also went to "ClassMarker" where quizzes and tests can be used in class or can be embedded into a website. There were free and paid accounts available for this tool.

Next, it was onto the "Presentation/Publishing/Multimedia tools" where I went to "Glogster". I've been curious about "Glogster" since Emily had it on our original assignment list, then removed it. Anyway, with "Glogster" you can use text, images, video, and music to make a "poster" of yourself and link the poster to Facebook, etc. "Glogster" is marketed as the "perfect way to express yourself". "Scrapblog" is an online scrapbook where photos can be published online or in print in order to archive special occasions and events. On "Scrapblog" you choose a project and design then add photos and finishing touches. "MyPhotoAlbum" you can create online photo albums by using your own photos and images from the web. Photo and video storage is available and there are private and public settings for sharing photos and videos.

I also looked at a few "Image and Photography tools". "Flickr" is a site where you can share photos and videos. There are free "basic" accounts are available and the site includes a photo management tool. Using "Picasa" you can import pictures from your camera and make video and photo slide shows. I am going to use this site for my Digital Storytelling assignment since it's a free download from Google. Finally, I visited "SaysIt" where you can create funny photos and graphics like signs (think the funny church signs), seals, badges, et cetera.

Wordle

I love Wordle! It is a way to be creative for us non-arsty folk. I can see using Wordle for projects after reading a novel or short story in English, for example, using Wordle to critique the work, list the characters, give a plot summary, et cetera. Wordle could be used for an art project since font color, size, and style can be changed (also tagul.com and tagxedo.com would be great with this type of assignment). It can be used in the beginning of the school year for the students to introduce themselves to their teacher - tell who you are using Wordle, for instance. Wordle can be used for holidays or to commemorate special occasions (birthdays, first communions, et cetera) - it is the lazy-man's scrapbooking tool! I would use Wordle for the cover sheet/title page in my students' binders or for them to tell what they have learned in a course over the past school year. It would be a fun way for them to really think about all of the things they learned and perhaps submit it as a final assignment for the year. They could use the opportunity to be creative and inject their personality into it.

The two Wordles I did as part of the assignemnt were a portion of Martin Luther King's 1963 "I have a Dream" speech. I found a text of the speech and copied and pasted the "I have a dream..." portion of the speech into Wordle. After some minor glitches with Java, it finally worked. I submitted this Wordle to the public folder on the Wordle site. I also used terms from my Astronomy class to compose another Wordle. I plan on posting both of them in my classroom. The kids will probably ask what they are and I can share Wordle with them. Wordle was a really interesting and exciting discovery for me!

Diigo

I found Diigo to be quite interesting, a different take on the Wiki and other tools with collaborative potential. It was also fairly easy to use. I believe this tool would be useful for groups to share information that cannot be summmarized easily. In other words, one must go to the source/article to get all the information. This tool would be useful for students working in a group on a research project as well. They could pool their resources using Diigo and pick from the best to use in their project. Or, alternatively, they could assign each group member a part of the project to research and all members of the group could see what the others have collected. Members could also check up on who is the weakest member of the group (who has not done their share of research or whose work is lacking in quality). Teachers and instructors could join the group to keep tabs on student progress.

During the summer I work at the Greater Cincinnati Civic Garden Center as a volunteer on the Horticulture Helpline. We often get numerous calls for help on the same subject/topic, so something like Diigo would be a great way to electronically pool the resources we find on the web on a particular topic (end rot in tomatoes, for example) to share with one another and with our clients as well.