Digital Storytelling with Grades 6 & 7

I have been playing  (yes, playing, I think playtime is so important and necessary with new technology) with Digital Storytelling since I first got an iPad.  But my experience really changed after I heard Dean Shareski talk about the 60 one second movie.  Well my colleagues and I loved this idea and we got right on to playing with our iPads and making our own sample movies.   Making a movie myself was very important...at our school we talk a lot about the importance of going where we want out students to go!  My Thanksgiving 60 second movie is below. 

Our students then created their own 60 second iMovies.  The challenge: Tell the story of School in 60 seconds (thank you to our prinicipal, Antonio Vendramin, for leading this with the grade 6s while the teachers went to camp with the 7s).  The results were fantastic!  The kids told a story using short video clips.

We have also told the story of Healthy Living, using the Learning Outcome: "Describes the benefits of being physically active on attaining and maintaining a balanced, healthy lifestyle" (BC Prescribed Learning Outcome) as our inspiration.  Again, students used the 1 second clip type of iMovie to tell their stories.

And last week, in time for Valentine's Day, we told our stories through music by creating Friendship Music Parodies.  Our inspiration was the learning outcome, "identifies characteristics of healthy relationships" (BC Prescribed Learning Outcome) and of course Valentine's Day too.  

Well, we certainly discovered that this type of storytelling (music video) was very difficult!  Students had to:

-choose a song
-rewrite the lyrics so that they were about healthy friendships and relationships-storyboard the song, thinking about how they were going to make the video images consistent with the new lyrics and the music
-film the story 
-sing their parody version of the song and layer over their video
-edit and add in friendship quotes as they saw fit

Students love storytelling.  Next up for us, telling stories using book creator with our little buddies.  We did this last year and they loved it!  

And then I am looking forward to trying out some new ways of digital storytelling!  Obviously you can see what types I am most comfortable with, but thanks to #etmooc, I am learning about so many more methods!  More to come soon...