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Posts tagged digital storytelling
10 Digital Writing Opportunities You Probably Know and 10 You Probably Don't
Dec 12th
On Thursday I finally had some time to sit with our Key Stage 2 (junior) literacy coordinator and talk about how technology can support writing outcomes for the Primary Framework for Literacy.
It was a meeting all about ideas (my favourite) and we discussed the best ways that technology could support the process of writing and drive the eventual outcomes. In this post I have included a list of 10 literacy/writing tools or outcomes that, in my opinion, teachers should currently be aware of. Many of them are basic yet still powerful tools in the classroom that support children’s writing. They are in no particular order.
In addition I have also included 10 alternative tools that either offer a different perspective on digital writing or are a little known tool, that may have huge potential in the classroom. Not everything is free nor is it online – but the list will hopefully provide food for thought when you are looking at your next non-fiction or narrative unit with your class.
1 – Photostory – in my opinion one of the simplest and yet most powerful tools for primary literacy. I particularly appreciate the linear structure of the software, the ease with which you can incorporate speaking and listening and the quality of the multi-modal outcome.
2 – Powerpoint – I have never been a fan but PPT does offer a wider range of tools a functionality then some other presentation software. Children could create a non fiction text with linked contents and glossary – including the use of film and audio. There are of course heaps of online equivalents including 280 Slides, Zoho and Google Docs.
3 – SMART Notebook – in the same family as Powerpoint of course with the same sense of a non-chronological text could be created with it. This has proven a very effective tool for the children in our school as they have been watching Notebook in action since 2003. The children enjoy the ease with which you can work with the object based interface. A recent example of use in Year 4 in our school saw the children using screen capture to find, within a text, examples of language features and they then authored their own linked information texts.
4 – MovieMaker – (and Apple equivalents of course) simple and in the same boat as Photostory – it just gives you the complete package of allowing children to incorporate film into their texts. We have used it to create responses to the Aiden Gibbons film The Piano. The children added text, spoken word, soundtracks, film, still images (+effects) transitions etc.
5 – Word Processor – simple word processed documents could be done in Word or Google Docs. This year we have completed an instruction text on how to create and play a game in Sploder.
6 – Short Podcast – using Audacity or other recording/podcasting software children could create short scripted podcasts. They could be part of revision or even as an example of a balanced argument. The audio could then be imported and used in other applications.
7 – Film – there are lots of simple mini digital video cameras available now and ideally with lots in the classroom the children could create their own original films. They could present an interview, part of a story, balanced argument or an explanatory text for a different topic. We are looking at getting as many Flip Videos as we can get our hands on.
8 – Voicethread – still not that widely used, but one of the most important speaking and listening tools I have used in the classroom. Films, images or text can be explored – comments can be added via text, webcam, audio or even by mobile phone (!) – as the pupil is adding their comment they can also use a pen tool to highlight the feature they are discussing. Children could use Voicethread to model interview questions, structure responses to a narrative or to share ideas for story starters as we have done earlier this year. The collaborative feature provides them with a pool of ideas and support from their peers. Huge potential.
9 – Kar2ouche – you have to pay to use this but our Year 6 teachers have had great success with Kar2ouche to support their Macbeth work. Scenes can be storyboarded from a bank of illustrated graphics, audio can be recorded directly in or layered on top from a resource bank. There is room for the children to write a fuller narrative for the scenes or just to add speech bubbles. In the same category as Photostory due to the storyboarding but much more powerful.
10 – Myths and Legends Story Creator 2 – a free online version of Kar2ouche that focuses on a specific story type. Classes can have unique logins and they can record audio and build scenes from a set of graphics, their own images can be imported. A great alternative to Kar2ouche and perfect for the Myths and Legends unit.
No doubt that not much of that is new to many of you, however I hope that the next 10 alternative tools gives you further food for thought and something to explore for next terms’ writing units. It is an exciting time to be encouraging young children to enjoy writing as there are so many free tools that engage and take a different perspective on it all.
1 – Google Earth stories – the imagery presented to us in Google Earth provides a rich platform to inspire and develop stories. Work could be written into the placemarks or indeed media created elsewhere could be embedded within them like we have done. Information text located in the correct context would of course be ideal, for example an explanatory text about the features of a river system using the River Nile as it’s location or indeed the Valley of the Kings as the location for information in an Egyptian topic. Why not do a WW2 evacuee story and find a train station in a large city and then follow the line out into the countryside? Endless contexts for writing.
2 – Wordle – I thought this little tool would be great to analyse written stories in the same way Steve Kirkpatrick has done with his class. A Wordle could be a great way to introduce a text – exploring what is emphasised to help understand the type of writing it is taken from. Is it instruction, explanation – how can you tell? Another idea is that the children create a poem as a Wordle, it would certainly be challenging the form of conventional poetry.
3 – PicLit – this great creative writing tool allows you to drag vocabulary onto an image. Although you cannot upload your own images, the picture gallery is well stocked with inspiring pictures to explore. Children could try and tell the story within the picture or create some poetry in response to the image. PicLits can be saved, emailed and used elsewhere.
4 – Tag related search – using tag related searches can help children to understand the family of vocabulary that they could use. The relationships we generate between common words could be tapped into by a class to not only explore the images from Flickr, as in Tag Galaxy, but also broaden their vocabulary for written work. Don’t just focus on the images but explore the language too.
5 – Woices – place a recorded piece of a story audio on a map, combine the pieces into a route or journey. Woices will allow you to create a geotagged story or journey with audio being the main medium. Work could be narrative based or a simple recount of a recent class trip or journey into the local area. More informative tourist guide type outcomes could be scripted and added to the correct locations on a map.
6 – Cartoon strip – Tools such as Strip Generator and Make Beliefs Comix give children the opportunity to quickly generate short cartoon strips. The simplicity allows them to quickly explore aspects of narrative and speech as they take seconds to figure out how to use. I used Make Beliefs Comix today with my class to support their understanding of direct speech. Thanks to willie42 and MrKp for first suggesting these, we had a good lesson.
7 – Museum Box – Thanks to smilin7 for suggesting this one. Museum Box is a tool from the makers of the Myths and Legends resource above. It “provides the tools for you to build up an argument or description of an event, person or historical period by placing items in a virtual box.” Children can add text, files, video, audio and images into the box and it looks like a really unique way to explore an event or historical figure. It would be good to help the children explore characterisation – what would we put in the box to help us understand Aunt Sponge? I look forward to exploring this more in the future.
8 – Textorizer – This is an online tool that allows you to upload an image, add text and then the image is recreated using the writing. It would be a good exploration of imagery and written text – perhaps a short poem created over series of lessons with a bold or distinctive image as a starting point. Then textorized as a final emalgamation of text and imagery. Thankyou to nzchrissy for pointing out this one.
9 – Bookr - I have always liked the pimpampum applications and in fact one of the very first blog posts I wrote was using Bubblr their comic strip tool. Bookr is from the same family and it is very easy to create a simple book using Flickr images, add some text and then publish.
10 – Adventure Island – Another resource that I discovered through Twitter, the thanks going this time to helenrf, Adventure Island provides a platform to write a reader defined adventure story. “Pupils create challenges and puzzles for the visitor to solve. As the visitor travels around a created Island, descriptive writing for each area encourages them to explore further. Will they be able to survive, and leave the Island, or will they remain forever … trapped?” This resource is based around a Y6/7 transition unit on Kensuke’s Kingdom by Michael Morpurgo but could be used detached from that context – there is plenty of supporting ideas and tips on how to use it with a class.
Phew! It is always good to get all of those ideas buzzing in your head down in a blog post and I hope that there is something here for you to consider next time there is a writing outcome in a literacy unit. Throughout a writing unit I look to use at least one application that encourages speaking and listening, and refining of recorded speaking as a precursor to writing. I wouldn’t use these tools in isolation and some compliment each other very well.
This is by no means an exhaustive list but it certainly helps to illustrate the breadth of opportunity currently available to explore literacy in a digital form. As always, please let me know your thoughts, what you might add and what classroom experiences you have had of using them.
Google Earth is Our Paper – Part 5: A Week in Review
Dec 1st
Our week of storytelling in Google Earth has finished however I wanted to wrap up my reflections on working in this way. In this post I look back over the process and review the benefits you will reap and any challenges that you may face in implementing a similar unit.
A piece of Google Earth storytelling is definitely manageable within a week (5-6 hours) and in that sense is very flexible. The completed outcome from each child was a set of 6 placemarks that included:
- An embedded Vocaroo audio snippet of a rehearsed and planned piece of the story from James’ point of view.
- A written sentence that was a second draft of that first audio clip. An improved version that built in the language work we had done as a class to support the story.
You can see these two story elements in this screenshot of a child’s work.
If you would like to hear the audio, see the other 5 placemarks and the work as a whole then you can download the KMZ file here. During the week I worked with a supported literacy group and here is the audio work we completed together.
Challenges of digital storytelling in Google Earth
- Saving - this has been the biggest issue for us as the children will encounter temporary files saved locally in Google Earth. This is especially true when working on different laptops over a period of days. As the placemarks were the same, it led to confusion. If I was to do another unit of work with GE I would ensure that the children save work with their name included and I would also purge the local files at the end of every session. Another option is to explore the use of Google Maps.
- Uncertainty - as with most applications the more confident you are as a user the more you will get from it. Google Earth has a lot going on with various menus, folders and windows. The children often ran into a sticky spot if they could not find the item they were looking for or generally felt unfamiliar with the layout. If I was to repeat this unit again I would probably ensure there has been equivalent hours put in before hand that doesn’t just orientate them to the basics but allows them time to work with files, saving and the various layers of information. This would raise their level of confidence, consequently the layout of Google Earth would not be a hurdle to better storytelling.
Benefits of digital storytelling in Google Earth
- Visual - beginning with such a rich visual stimulus as Google Earth imagery gives the children such a different experience of storytelling then what they are used to. In this unit we benefited as a class not being straight-jacketed to a written, paper based plan. We were free to roam and explore the imagery we had, there were constraints that we agreed, but the plot was there in that imagery waiting for us to tease it out.
- Control - the children had control over the way they explored their story. They moved, tilted and zoomed, they controlled how their journey looked to them. I walked around the room during the week and they were all exerting this control over how the narrative space looked to them. I suppose in a small way this personalises the journey for them.
- Discovery - we began with a single location, a place I believed would be good to tell our escape story. It needed that decision, but from there we decided as a group what would happen. The snakey line you see in the example files or images could have easily taken us in another direction. The children discovered the elements of the story we included. In the first sessions we explored the local area in pairs and the children noted and discussed possible places of refuge. One child shared with us, by zooming in on the SMARTBoard, the building yard that we eventually chose to hide in as James. At that point int he lesson we had not even decided which way to turn from outside his house – but it was clear that the yard would provide us with lots of opportunities so we included it our escape. Let the children find their path, their journey – let them discover what is out there and allow the plot to be formed as you go.
- Embedding Media – Google Earth placemarks allow a whole host of media to be embedded in support of your story. We have added a simple audio player but you could easily have some drama work filmed and uploaded to a video hosting site, then embedded. That would be a great extension to what we have done and not too difficult either.
- Geotagged Narrative – beyond the huge variety of imagery children have as a starting point the sense of making your narrative happen in situ really appeals to me. You have to consider the tense that you work in, however the combination of narrative types in one place is a huge benefit to working in Google Earth. You could have written, spoken, filmed and drawn media all in the very location it is occurring.
Where do we go from here?
In my opinion I think that this week has challenged me to think of storytelling in a new way. I think I have a good understanding of digital narrative, but working in Google Earth and defining the plot in response to the environment turns it all on it’s head. My class were not trying to conjure up some bright idea, they were inspired by the images in front of them, by the landscape and make up of the location. Just think of all of those locations…just waiting to be a location for a story. (You could even do one on Mars or The Moon!)
Somewhere local to the school to begin would also be a great starting point – perhaps a trip to somewhere near the school and the children do a recount of the day. I would also like to explore the potential of social stories, children generating small snippets of narrative roughly under the same plotlines, in different placemarks but again in roughly the same location. These could then be shared and the individual child chooses a path for their character to take adding their peers narrative parts to form a whole.
Tear up the paper, be a location scout, let the landscape guide you, tip storytelling upside down and give it a shake – most of all let the children discover their own journey, their own path. You never know where it might lead.
Google Earth is our Paper – Part 1: Find a location, Begin a journey
Nov 23rd
This is a series of posts about the use of Google Earth as a platform for my students to write. It was first inspired by the 21 Steps by Charles Cumming highlighted by Ewan McIntosh in a seminar at the Scottish Learning Festival.
For a while I have been keen to take advantage of, and further explore, Google Earth for writing and this series of posts will document the unit we are currently running in our classes which is a piece of a wider digital narrative jigsaw.
Be a Location Scout
I wanted to dispense with the written plan for this unit and begin with a location and journey that could be plotted on Google Earth. For a while I thought about coming up with a fictional context for our work but in the end I decided that the amount of work we had already done on Roald Dahl’s James and the Giant Peach would give the children comfort and confidence.
The first step is to find a suitable location in Google Earth for your writing context. I was looking for a house on a hill, near to the sea, that in the story was owned by Aunt Sponge and Spiker. It may feel like a needle in a haystack but really you are spoilt for choice! You have to become a location scout for your upcoming writing, and spending a little time finding the right place will pay dividends.
I soon decided that we were going to write the story of James escaping from his Aunts’ house and the surrounding area needed to provide a location for the story. I found a location with a small town at the foot of the hill and realised this was ideal. Take a look at the house in this Google Earth file.
This is the file I shared with my class – they opened it and explored the surrounding area for possible escape routes. We discussed as a class suitable hiding places: old buildings, bushes, cattle sheds. The children highlighted these on the SMARTBoard so we could share them as a class. With more built up areas the layers of information you can add in Google Earth could aid the children’s discovery of plot ideas.
It was important for me to continually bring it back to the fact that we are going to tell the story here, in Google Earth, this was our planning. We were exploring possible plot lines together and I would discuss possible sentences with the class – this helped them to focus on the escape story. The children responded really well to the visual, spatial idea for planning a story.
Plot Your Story’s Journey
The next step for us was to plot the escape route for James and I wanted the children to explore this themselves. After a brief demonstration of how to use the path tool in Google Earth the children went off and plotted ideas for escape routes on their laptops. It was liberating for the children to be planning their story in this way – I witnessed lots of speaking and listening as they talked through escape ideas and situations that might arise as the Aunts give chase.
To maintain a clear class focus we worked together to plot a journey from the house to James’ eventual escape. As we plotted the journey James would take on foot away from the house we made decisions on the fly about which way he would turn and which places he may stop and hide – all of the time picking up on ideas or locations the children recognised. The location was helping us define the story – the children were not just trying to dream something up.
A building site in the town offered us a great opportunity for escape and we even stopped and hunkered down between two parked lorries. I zoomed in and talked to the class about what they could imagine seeing and hearing – we spoke of the dust and mud on the large tyres and the sound of workmen nearby. All of which I hope will enrich their writing.
The building site led to an idea for his escape and as a class we decided that he would not continue on foot but conceal himself in a nearby lorry, which would eventually drive away from the Aunts and take him to safety in the next town. You can see the journey we plotted in this Google Earth file.
The children will now be adding audio to the journey and begin to talk through their escape stories. It is clear from this example that the opportunities for children’s fiction being inspired by and driven by a location is huge. It should be an interesting week of work with the class.
Woices and Google Earth for Digital Fiction
Nov 1st
These are some of the ideas I have been brewing over during my half term break from school. Today I managed to have a great few hours and got 3 solid looking weeks of planning done which incorporate all of these concepts. As the next few weeks pass I will reflect on their effectiveness in the classroom with our classes.
Photostory
Not a particularly new idea as this is a firm favourite for digital storytelling. I have always spoken highly of this simple application from Microsoft because it has such a clearly set out structure to follow. It is particularly beneficial for young children as there is noa chance they will get lost in an open application searching for features or trying to remember how to do things. Photostory is linear in structure and so each step has to be passed by to finish.
We have had success in the past with Photostory so it is familiar territory for the staff in Year 5 but our classes have yet to look at it with us. They had some brief experience with their classes last year but not on the scale we want to use it.
The children will be generating illustrations, clay models, images and paintings to help tell the story of James and the Giant Peach for the first few days. We are not taking on the whole story though, as the children have already written a letter explaining about his early predicament to an imaginary character. We are going to use Photostory to bring that letter to life and make it multi modal in nature. The prior writing will be a good source of support and the children will add audio and narration of their correspondence in this new digital way.
Comiqs
I first came across Comiqs from Steve Kirkpatrick’s excellent blog. There are growing numbers of online comic and cartoon sites but the feature that makes this so useful in the classroom is its simplicity. I am looking forward to mashing up their writing into this different digital form following our Photostory work. The children will have to reappraise their writing and look at the direct speech of characters in more detail due to the comic book genre.
I have contacted Michael at Comiqs regarding multiple logins and just asking advice in general about using it with a class of 30 or even 60 children in total. It is clear that a class sign in system, like Voicethread, is not yet in place so I wanted his opinion – single login for the class or multiple logins. He replied:
Currently, it might be best to use a single login and password for the site. However, managing the photos, etc, would be a bit of an issue. However, we might look into implementing a paid service with better much login and classroom support.
If this is the case it should be interesting looking out for this in the future. I am excited about letting the children loose on Comiqs and know they will enjoy using it for their digital narrative, nonetheless it remains to be seen how well it copes with large amounts of media in a single account, accessed by many children.
Google Earth
During a seminar at the Scottish Learning Festival Ewan McIntosh explained about using Google Earth for narrative in Penguin’s 21 Steps examples from Charles Cumming. The idea struck me that beginning with a journey would be a great way to tell a story and combined with the children’s general confidence around Google Earth it should be a great medium for narrative.
The idea for our own work is using James and the Giant Peach as our launch pad, but taking it in a different direction. I thought today that the class could write his escape from the clutches of his Aunt and to write the ongoing story using placemarks in Google Earth.
I spent some time hunting around for a place in England somewhere that matched the location of the house from the Dahl story. I found somewhere in Dorset I think, on a hill with a thin sliver of sea visible in the distance.
I will show the children how to create a path using Google Earth and talk through James’ possible escape. We will use the real features of the land to help inform the narrative. I will ask the children to write 6-10 parts of the escape story from James’ point of view. Each placemark could form a paragraph and must refer to the real environment around it.
I love the idea of a visual pathway beginning the story rather than traditional plans or notes. I think the children will respond well to this digital form of stroytelling and perhaps we can make it an option in the future for writing narrative. The possibilities are huge for the scope of this work and combined with other information and creative media within Google Earth layers it could really support children’s storytelling. This is the one I am most looking forward to exploring.
Woices
To support the location driven narrative of Google Earth and to provide the children with the opportunity to talk through their writing ideas prior to using GE, I have decided to plan in a few sessions using Woices. This is a geotagging audio site and is meant to be used for recording audio references “echoes” about places in the world, they then can be combined together to form a “walk” of “echoes” with something in common.
An echo is an audio record that is attached to a physical real-world location or object. Echoes are words, left by one person at some precise place, that can be listened to by anyone, as if their author was still there. Echoes can speak about any topic and respond to any user’s purpose. They can speak about local history, art, curiosities, personal memories, and so on. Just something you think its worth to leave that may make the world a more interesting place.
As soon as I saw this tool i thought digital storytelling on a map! And that is how I am planning on using it, the children will take their journey from Google Earth (see above) and record audio of James’ escape story. The children have to navigate on a world map to the location of the first piece of audio, so giving them a real location to search will be important, and then they record part of the narrative. Whereas Google Earth placemarks are the written version, Woices is the spoken version.
This is still very much an unknown service and I am unsure how it will cope with the media we will throw at it in a very short time. I will be getting in touch with the folk at Woices to forewarn them and to get some advice about usage. Once again their is an issue around many users on one single login and with lots of media being generated.
I am planning that the children will work in pairs to create their Woices audio on the map – once the “echoes” have been created they then can choose a bunch of them to create a “walk” and this will tie in together theor work creating a seamless narrative.
Of course now thinking about it the pooled audio provides for an interesting option of generating a whole variety of “walks” by combining different children’s ideas. I also had the thought that the Google Earth journey type narrative could lead from one path to another. The starting point for one child’s story could be the end of another, the whole class has the same theme and you begin with a shared/modelled piece of work and then the children take different parts of the journey. Combining to form a whole class digital journey narrative.
There are many unanswered elements here and a completely new application to explore in the classroom, but there is also the reliability of Photostory and the exciting prospect of geo-narrative in Google Earth. I am looking forward to what the children make of it all and broadening their horizons to the nature of storytelling and narrative.
