05 November 2017

Digital Storytelling


Blabberize allows you to add voice to a hand-drawn picture that you upload to the site.
I have used this website for students to publish writing. I often integrate science or social studies into my writing block. 
For example, for third grade you can have students write about a region of Georgia to go along with your science standards. Then have students draw a picture of an animal from that region. After that you would take a picture of the drawing and upload it into blabberize. Lastly, you will record the each student reading their writing. When you play it back it will look as if the drawn animal is talking and reading the writing. 

Some ideas for each grade level (based on 2017 Georgia Standards of Excellence):
K
1. Have students illustrate a picture of themselves and write about themselves or their family at the beginning of the year. Record their dictation of their writing.
2. Have students draw a picture of the Statue of Liberty or Bald Eagle and tell about American Symbols after writing about the topic.
3. Have students draw themselves and then tell about rules and why they are created.
4. Draw police officer, fire fighter, etc. and write about the work they do. Record each student reading their writing.

1
1. Students can draw a picture of Johnny Appleseed (or other person you've recently learned about)
Have students write what they have learned about Johnny Appleseed.
Record students reading their writing about Johnny Appleseed.
*same activity with Ruby Bridges, Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Sacagawea, etc.


2
1. Students can draw a picture of Jackie Robinson (or other person you've recently learned about)
Have students write what they have learned about Jackie Robinson.
Record students reading their writing about Jackie Robinson.
*same activity with Mary Musgrove, MLK, Juliette Gordon Low, Jimmy Carter, etc.

3
1. Students can draw a picture of John Cabot (or other person you've recently learned about)
Have students write what they have learned about John Cabot
Record students reading their writing about John Cabot.
*same activity with Henry Hudson, Christopher Columbus, etc.

4
1. Students can draw a picture of Paul Revere (or other person you've recently learned about)
Have students write what they have learned about Paul Revere.
Record students reading their writing about Paul Revere.
*same activity with John Adams, Patrick Henry, Benedict Arnold, etc.

5
1. Student scan draw a picture of Thomas Edison (or other person you've recently learned about)
Have students write what they have learned about Thomas Edison.
Record students reading their writing about Thomas Edison.
*same activity with George Washington Carver, Alexander Graham Bell, Langston Hughes, Babe Ruth, etc.

Examples:




Example 1

Storybird
This website allows you to set up a classroom account for free. Students can then create their own books and use professional illustrations in their book. 
I use this website for students to create ideas based on the illustrations provided. Students can get as creative as their imaginations allow.

You can share their finished book by embedding the book on your webpage, sharing it in an email or even through class dojo and google classroom.







Voki

Your students will absolutely love Voki. You can publish any piece of writing that your students have completed by creating an avatar on voki and having the avatar read the writing. I often have students type their writing into a google doc and then copy and paste that into the text portion of voki for the avatar to read. My students especially enjoy the strange accents that the characters have.

Example 1

Example 2

Voki Tutorial



Powtoon allows you or students to animate your own presentation or story.
There is a free and paid version of Powtoons, the free version is limited on characters and objects. The free version will work perfectly fine for students to create stories or presentations.

After selecting a premade template or starting from scratch, students can add their own characters and objects and text to the presentation.

At the end they are able to add a voice over to each slide and apply music provided by the website. 

The end result is a very professional looking presentation or story.




Google Slides
Students can access this from google. I call it a "bingo board" that they click on in the upper right of google and then they can select slides.
Students can share their presentation/story with other students and work together to complete the presentation/story.



They can add pictures from kiddle.co or draw their own illustrations using Google Drawing (go to bingo board, Drive, new, and then google drawing).




I know that some of you have iPads and would like to know how to do this with apps. Here are some noteworthy apps, but voki and google slides are offered as apps as well.

Morfo

See my past post for Morfo HERE

Sock Puppets





Toontastic




Telestory

Tellagami



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02 November 2017

This Week in the Media Center- 10/30/17

Here are a few things we did in the media center this week.
First off, we dressed up to say, "Boo to Bullying!"
I was Lilo and my paraprofessional was Stitch. Basically, all the kids thought I was Moana and she was a mouse. I guess I went a little too old school on the cartoon reference.


My administrators performed one of their wonderful Pay Day songs!


I had all 3-5 students bring their chromebooks with them to the media center this week and add the media center google classroom code in order to join my classroom. Now, I can easily send links and information to them.

We learned about the Media Festival and I explained that students could easily use Google Slides to create a presentation or tell a story. We discussed how students must be very concise of copyright when submitting projects for Media Festival. I showed students that one option for illustrations would be to use Google Drawings to create their own graphics and pictures, instead of finding images on the internet. They were excited to learn how to access Google Drawings. We also practice selected an image they created in Google Drawing and pasting this image into a Google Slide presentation. This may seem obvious to you, but my students were pumped to learn how to do this.


We also created accounts in Powtoon and discussed how a presentation in Powtoon would be considered animation in the Media Festival categories. We practiced using the premade templates and swapping out the characters and objects. I also discussed adding a voice over and background music on the presentation. This part was a bit rushed and I intend to review Powtoons with students another week when they visit the media center.



Book Reviews using Flipgrid
I showed each class how to use Flipgrid to record a book review. We talked about how it should be a commercial/advertisement for a book and should not give the entire book away. Students said to not give too much information or else it would be a spoiler alert! They giggled and laughed so much while watching me record myself do an example of a book review.



Lastly, I had students listen to my very favorite Halloween story.


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