Things are heating up.

Over here at Chugiak in my Spanish three class, students are getting their stories storyboarded and working on their second round of digital stories. I think that this round will be a lot better because we already went through the process and both the students and myself learned quit a great deal from the last experience. I am looking forward to this round. I have yet to tell the students that the winners of the people's choice awards will have to create subtitles for their movies. I am going to offer them extra credit so I am sure they will be happy with that. 

story plans

We are racing through third quarter at Steller and everything seems to be getting very compressed so I think I am going to revise my original plan of having my Forensic Science kids complete a video story highlighting a case study and its impact on a Forensic Science specialty and move to a story with my ecology students that centers on an invasive species. The big issue with us this quarter is how much time might need to be given to this in the computer lab and limited availability of computer lab space at the needed time.

I think that for my story I was going to try something with an element of humor - I wanted to try and do a story of what being a teacher really meant but I haven't got a good idea fleshed out yet. I need to sit down and try and story board the idea myself.

Mmmmm - lots of work to go, a little bit overwhelming but hopefully it will all come together as needed.

cheers Shannon

Amy D's Fractured Fairy Tale Project

I have been moderately involved with Tyler's Family and Heritage Project. It's provided a good context to teach students how to cite sources from internet images to print resources. This has also been a good opportunity to introduce digital reference tools that are available via the Alaska Library Network digital pipeline. Having a mobile learning lab with enough laptops for all students has really enhanced the instruction.

I am also working with a group of 4th/5th grade students on a digital video production. Students have chosen a classic fairy tale that needs to be written as a fractured tale. Group sizes are large (~12 students) which presents some management challenges. However, kids have finished up narratives and are currently storyboarding. Scripts will be developed upon completion of storyboards (although it may have been better to script first). When the story is solid, major production will get underway. I'm really looking forward to working with iMovie and using sound effects, transitions, lighting, camera angles, heavy editing to produce the story. Ambitious, eh?

My project plan is to produce a multimedia video to honor my mom, who'll be celebrating her 80th birthday this summer. I'd like to integrate still photos, old movie footage, sketches, and audio anecdotes from family members throughout the production.

Please post a quick update!

Please give us an update of your storytelling projects. Please post a paragraph or so telling us how what kind of project you are doing.

Create your own entry. Everyone involved in the project is an author of this blog. So, please create your own entry with your name in the title.

Tell us about both projects. Each of you is doing one project on your own, and one with your students. So, please tell us about both of them. Even if you haven't started, tell us what you are thinking of doing. And feel free to comment to each other's posting.

Questions? If you have questions about anything, from how to do something technical, to how to proceed with a story, feel free to post it to this blog or to ask me directly.

Looking forward to hearing your stories!

Jason

Welcome to Festival of Stories

This weblog was created to help facilitate conversation among the teachers involved in the Anchorage School District's Festival of Stories digital storytelling project. A list of the teachers and district folks involved appears in the links on the right.