Digital Storytelling

Digital storying telling is an amazing tool to use in the classroom. I have just discovered this tool and know that it will benefit me in my future teaching career. Both children and adults can create their own art of digital storytelling. With the use of media, pictures, voice, and words it is a new way to share creative art. 

Voice Threads are an online media albums that can hold any type of media (images, documents, and videos) and allows people to make comments in five different ways: using voice (with a microphone or telephone), text, audio file, or video (with a webcam) and share them with anyone they wish. Not only are they using images and sound to teach and present, they are now able to upload documents, presentations, videos, and images for the purpose of collaboration. 

Voice Threads are a perfect tool to use in the elementary classroom. This website gives a few examples of elementary voice threads: elementary voice threads . 

I have created my own voice thread to use in the elementary classroom that follows my unit plan 

This is my guideline that I will follow when teaching this specific unit on glaciers.

This is my Voice Thread for glaciers:

 

Works Cites Resources

I published this web page which includes many resources I found helpful for my unit theme. 

As I was searching the web to find these resources I began thinking to myself how helpful this is for any teacher. Creating this works cited document was easy; all I did was made sure I organized it so I could locate my tools easier. You do this by dividing what you found into categories (information, pictures, videos, ect.) I have discovered that this type of social media can assist both teachers and students as global learners. 

I can envision using a variety of resources in my unit plan and future lesson plans. There is SO much out there that we can use to help us teach what is needed to teach. All it takes is a some good quality researching and we can make our lives easier by the use of these resources. There are videos, articles, papers, lesson plans, sound clips, art, pictures, activities, and much much more we can use to help our students learn and to meet their needs. 

Blogging is a great communication tool to use in the classroom for students to use as journals. They can find their resources through student friendly websites like www.ajkids.com and www.awesomelibrary.org and much more. They can reflect on their findings by writing in their blogs. This is going to help them remember what they are learning and also have a better understanding. 

Using Blogging in the Classroom

This blog has an article to help teachers see how to use blogs in the classroom and the benefits we can gain from them. 

Bloggers who help you teach

Blogging is an excellent way to incorporate inquiry based and project based learning in the classroom. Technology is becoming an important part of our everyday life and we should use it to our advantage. Students will enjoy communitcating with each other and other people around the world. It gives them a chance to be creative writers without having to write with a pencil and paper.

Students can use blogs as journals to relfect on their projects. They get the option to have an audience for their own version of news. Anyone who has an idea can share it with a click of a button. Blogging builds relationships with other bloggers to inspire and motivate each other. It allows us to communicate with anyone in the world.Blogging can help the students be able to look back at what they did and create their own opinions and ideas.Incorporating Inquiry and Project based learing with this unit would benefit both the teacher and the students. Also, using a blog as a journal for students to reflect on would be a great tool in the classroom. The students can share, communicate, and learn with other students while building upon their technology and writing skills.

Project and Inquiry Based Learning

To use inquiry based learning in the classroom it is important to know the defination and all the components of this learning method. Inquiry-based learning is based on student’s involvement with the teacher and other students in the classroom. This involvement leads to understanding of the content and builds the skills of students. The word inquiry is defined as seeking the truth or information. The students build knowledge through discovery, asking questions, and seeking answers. Inquiring begins for most of us as babies, when we are trying to figure out the world around us, we smell and taste different things. Thus, inquiry is used with our five senses. It is our job as teachers to understand how inquiry-based learning can help our students and us in the future.

In the classroom we need to give the students the opportunity to quest for knowledge. To use inquiry-based learning in classrooms a teacher should allow her students to ask questions when they need to. It is important to ask students to examine and find clues, to ask questions about filling in the missing information and questions on what can be predicted or tested.The students should take their knowledge of what they have learned and use it in many different ways.

 

Project-based should alwyas include inquiry and is engaged learning through activities based on the student's interest.Students work together to create their own ideas and build knowledge through projects they work on for days, weeks, or even months. The students are able to work hands on, with such subjects as science in nature, or math. In depth activities are used to motivate students to solve problems in the classroom and in the world they live in. To use project-based learning in the classroom the teacher should plan out ideas that students can build upon and work in groups to complete a goal. The group may come up with something they see as a challenge or a problem and work together to try to overcome it.  It enables the students to work together in a more up to date learning style. Each student contributes to the learning and knowledge of the project.

 

A unit that I will be working on for the next few months will be a second grade science topic on changes. The TEKs that I will be going along with is:

TEKS:7) Science concepts. The student knows that many types of change occur. The student is expected to:

(A) observe, measure, record, analyze, predict, and illustrate changes in size, mass, temperature, color, position, quantity, sound, and movement;

(B) identify, predict, and test uses of heat to cause change such as melting and evaporation;

(C) demonstrate a change in the motion of an object by giving the object a push or a pull; and

(D) observe, measure, and record changes in weather, the night

 

My Essential question for this topic is: How does the earth change?

 

My Unit questions for this topic are:

What about the weather is different from yesterday?

Why is the sun not visible at night?

How does a volcano create more land?