Sunday, February 8, 2009

My digital storytelling creations for students

I have now become an active digital storyteller in my personal and professional life. At school, most of the stories I've created for my students have been ones to introduce them to the new school year or to get them excited about a special project or unit or a year end reflection video that they received as a souvenir of our year together.

Here is an example:

New School Year

Here is a video I made for the beginning of the new school year to welcome parents and students to my classroom. I changed it slightly between the English and French versions because they were intended for different audiences.

I found the student version in French very useful to review rules and expectations on the first day of school. Students were much more interested because it was a video as opposed to me reading out a list of rules and expectations. They also got to see themselves in the story which caught their attention. After viewing the video, we had a good discussion about the upcoming year. I also found the video useful to show to students who didn't come the first day and for those students who came later in the year. They all received the same information in an interesting way.

The parent video was also useful at the Open House as I only had to answer questions and explain a couple of documents that I was handing out. At our school, you give the same presentation twice so it was great to have a video to ensure that parents were getting the same message regardless of the presentation they attended. The parents also enjoyed seeing their "kids in action" in the classroom. They could see it was a fun place where their child was interacting with others, was happy and seemed excited to be there. I also used the parent version when a potential family was touring the school, trying to decide if they should come to our school or go to another school. I showed them the video and the parents were convinced that our school was the right fit for their child.

English version for parents shown at the open house:


French version to show on the first day of school to the students:

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