Project 3

Project Presentation


Project Write-Up

At the beginning of April, I undertook a digital storytelling project with my students. I decided that my middle school technology class of 30 students would go through the process we originally outlined in our first group projects, and that I would be mindful of important aspects of differentiation into this project.

My class website, as always, was a vital part of this project for the students.  I kept the project calendar, rubrics, process steps, video exemplars, tutorials and anything else related to the project that the students would need on this page.  It was broken down by a table of contents so that students could easily jump to the sections they were looking for.  This allowed both students and parents access to the whole project any time. Students could access the site at home or if they missed class, could download needed documents, watch exemplar and tutorial videos, see due dates, and the rubrics and checklists they would need.

In order to begin this project, I laid out an understanding by design template (see below), so that I could identify what standards I wanted them to meet, and clearly identify their performance task, as well as what they should know and be able to do, as well as what I would have to do to get them there. 

I knew I wanted them to write stories, and be sure they used all of the important story elements like characterizations, setting, plot, mood, conflict, climax, and resolution, yet I was unsure how solid they were on story elements to begin with. So I figured that would be a good place to start.

Before we began the project, I surveyed my students to see what knowledge and comfort levels they had with story elements, and various elements of digital storytelling.  The results told me first and foremost that many of my students are a little over confident!  However, for most of the questions, at least half or more of the class was honest in their self-appraisal in these areas. 

Together we read several stories of different genres (and reading levels), and then watched 4 examples of digital stories created by students (I kept these posted on the class website as exemplars for students to refer to throughout the project).  Throughout this process, we worked on defining and identifying story elements.  Students worked in self-selected partner groups, and could choose any of the digital or written stories we’d gone through in class to identify the story elements (characters, setting, plot, mood/tone, conflict, climax, resolution).

I wanted to be sure there was plenty of choice for students as part of this project, as I knew they would be more engaged if they could have more ownership over the process. I used a fiction-writing lesson that I used to use when I taught junior high English (see below), and we began there, brainstorming ideas, identifying our settings and characters, planning out our conflicts and resolutions.  For this particular assignment, students brainstormed a list of their favorite people, their favorite animals, and the habits or actions of others that annoyed them the most.  The challenge was for them to match something that really annoyed them personally, to a character they really liked, and then brainstorm what kinds of challenges or problems that could present as a basis for their story.  This left them lots of choice in terms of writing about things that were meaningful to them, things they knew a lot about, and things they felt strongly about, as well as plenty of room for imagination.

Then the writing began.  This part of the process took much longer than I anticipated – I blame that on the years that have passed since I actually taught junior high English – I should have known better! 

During this course, students have learned many technology skills in isolation.  They have learned to use Google Docs in Google Drive, how to use the Pages app on their iPad, and how to email from that app.  They have also learned to use the folders in their Google Drive, and how to use their Gmail as a “go between” for transporting their documents between devices.  Throughout the writing, revising and editing process, they were allowed to use any of these ways of sharing that they preferred for peer editing.  The class was fairly evenly split here – some liked the old-fashioned method of printing their stories and taking the editing pen to them.  Some would email their stories to each other, and some shared them on Google Docs with several friends, and left marks and comments within the document for each other.

After much drafting, proofreading, and revising, we were finally ready to begin story tables.  This part of the process was entirely new to the students, and took a solid week of intensive work, which included a lot of modeling on my part.  I put story table templates on our course website in Word and Pages, so that if students were working on different computers or at home, they would be able to access the template.  I also emailed a copy of just the Pages template to all of the students (the majority have iPads), so they would have no problems using it on their iPads. .  I also showed the students some storyboard software called “Storyboard That” that they could use as an alternative.  I had about 3 students begin playing around with it, but ultimately, the story tables were quicker to work with.

The story table process also involved small group meetings, and individual meetings with students.  In the end, most of the students had a lot of help from me, although most of the 8^th grade students were able to get through the process of breaking down their stories with very little help from me. The end of the story proofreading and the beginning of the Story Table work blended together, as students were definitely working at their own pace by this point. The students collected photos for their story tables, and wrote descriptions of their scene into the story tables, and these were exchanged and edited between the students and me over the course of the week.  During this portion, more of the skills they had learned in isolation earlier in the year came into play in a more applied way.  Some students set up folders in Google Drive, and collected their background images there. Some students dragged their images directly into their story table for a more visual effect as they were working on the table.

They began the even more technical stage of the project; using green screen effects, using iMovie, doing voice recordings, and putting in music and sound effects. 

I posted a tutorial video on our class website instructing students how to take pictures with green screen, and I also modeled the process for them several times using my green screen area and my SmartBoard to project the process in iMovie. The 8^th graders were already familiar with green screen, and so were a great help to the other students as tutors throughout this part of the project.  Some students caught on right away, and a handful of others, as well as a few students who were absent watched the tutorial video I had posted – some several times.

For their stories, they were to set their scenes using backgrounds chosen from the internet, with them in each picture.  I insisted they be in each picture, since they were the main characters in their stories. I wanted them to think of showing the action from the point of view of their character.  This part of the process allowed the students to get even more creative with their stories as they each looked for their own background images, and posed and shot their green screen photos.  Several students worked in small groups to help each other with the green screen shots. I left the classroom management aspect of this pretty open, and their behavior was very much task-driven as they wanted to get certain shots they had in mind, and were also eager to share their ideas about what they were doing with classmates.

Selecting music was difficult, and although I initially offered up a list of links for free music, this turned out to be more choice than was necessary - it was too much to handle, became a distraction and caused us to lose focus for a bit.  I decided it would be best to offer very limited choice for this, and most of the students worked with the canned sound effects already in iMovie.  I had a few 8th graders who grasped the soundtrack concept, were able to focus and pull their music fairly quickly.  

Finally – the projects were mostly complete!  Students began posting their videos to YouTube, and embedding them into posts on their own student blogs.

This is definitely one of the more complex projects I have undertaken with a class this size, but in terms of planning and management, I felt it went really well.  Allowing a lot of choice in terms of subject, voice, working at their own pace, choosing work flow tools and methods, getting feedback from others, and the overall creativity they were able to put in to the writing, pictures and sound turned out to be a really positive experience.  Students were engaged in the process throughout, and this alone eliminated a lot of the hassles that a more lock-step plan can create. 

At the end of the project, I gave the same survey to my students as I did at the beginning.  However, this time, an overwhelming majority answered in the positive to their levels of knowledge and comfort with aspects of story elements and digital story telling (the comparisons are shown and explained in my video). Based on much of my discussion and observations of the students throughout the project, I am fairly confident that their second attempt at the survey is a much more honest one than the first.  

I also used the project rubric (the same one that had been posted on the website for the students all along) to assess their videos.  With some of the students (mostly 8^th graders), we watched the video and went through the rubric together, which I think was a more helpful assessment.  However, this class consists of 30 students, so I did not have time to do this with each of them.  In my presentation video, you can see an example of how I applied this rubric to a student project.

In thinking about what I would do differently next time, of course there are always some things I would tweak (note – I am already doing this project again with my Spanish class).  Just like any kind of creative format, the first time is always the most difficult.  Part of this project simply involved giving my students a clear idea of what a digital story actually is.  From now on, we are free to focus more in specific aspects of the process, such as setting up scenes, symbolic imagery, choosing music and sound, voice modulation, and creating stories in different genres and for different purposes and audiences.  Much in the way I have done with writing over the years, I would also modify my rubric to reflect this level of focus within the project. In this project, most of those aspects were there, but on a very introductory level. For timeline and planning purposes, I’ll be sure to allot enough time up front for the students to really flesh out their ideas in written story form first.  This process takes a long time anyway, and if they don’t nail that, the rest of the process suffers.  As I continue to work through digital stories with my students, it will be nice to build up a collection of them to show as exemplars to my classes.

The finishing touches are being put on these videos this week, and as they are finished they will be posted to the student blogs.  To see the stories, click here to go tomy teacher page. Scroll down looking at the right side of the page, and you’ll see grade levels, and first names below each of them.  These are links to individual student blogs.  The digital stories belong to the 6^th, 7^th, and 8^th graders, so clicking on those names will get you to their latest “Digital Story” post. 

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