My Digital Story Experience

Christmas with the DeFrenzas

I chose to do my digital story on Christmas traditions with my family. Christmas is a very special time for our family and I believe that it makes us closer. It is a way for us to spend time together and to enjoy our family and the season. I had a lot of fun doing this project. I took pictures off my phone of photos from my family photo album and it really gave me a chance to look through our memories.

iMovie Reflection

I used iMovie to create my digital story. I have used iMovie before, so I was fairly familiar with it. However, I did experience an issue with the narration aspect. Initially, I recorded my voice without any problems. But when I was trying to record another section of narration it would not play. I ended up figuring out that I had record my voice twice and double up the recordings in order for one to play. I am not sure why this happened; however I got through it and succeeded in finishing my assignment with all of the requirements.

Every other feature of iMovie worked smoothly. I simply dragged in my photos, added in my songs, and uploaded the videos from YouTube after I converted them to a MP4. It was also very easy to overlap text into photos and videos. Thus, besides the narration glitch I thought the process was enjoyable and rewarding.

In the Classroom 

I would definitely assign a digital story project to my students. I could use this tool for many assignments in my English class. For example, one could be a digital story explaining a book that they read for a book review. I could assign a group of students a book or allow them to choose their own and tell them create a digital story about it. They would need to include narration, pictures, music, text and any other features that they feel would be helpful to aid in their explanation of the book.  This will be great for the students to use their creativity, explore more in depth about the book, and learn about other books after watching their classmate’s movies. Digital stories are an excellent way to integrate technology into the classroom and to allow students to employ their creativity. 

Christmas with the DeFrenzas

PLN

PLN: Twitter

Within the PLN assignment, I found that Twitter is a great source to use when considering learning more about the field of education. It is a great way to stay up to date on news in education, find helpful links, and connect with teachers or classmates.

Educational Resource

One resource that I found very interesting and a potential tool that I would use in my classroom was the link to “6 creative tips for using QR codes at school”. This resource includes many ideas that would employ QR codes in an effective way. For instance, one of the tips that really stuck out to me was the idea of supplementing homework assignments. This suggests that the teacher can include QR codes into the student’s assignments as a tool that will help them find the answer. For example a math teacher could create QR codes for difficult math problems and attach them to students’ homework. The students can then scan the code and watch a video of the teacher working through the problem step-by-step. Thus, this can be a very effective way to help students when they are working on their assignments at home. This resource that I have discovered via Twitter can be very useful for a teacher who wants to employ technology into the classroom in a fun and interactive way.

Link to resource: 6 tips for using QR codes at school

Posted by Graphite: @Graphite

#Edchat

I participated in an #Edchat by using Twubs and I found it to be very useful. When I first signed on, I saw many retweets of links to educational resources, but not many conversations. I commented on a participant’s retweet of a link entitled, “Updates to Google Classroom are Coming”, however I did not receive a reply. I then waited a few minutes and commented on @Jyoung1219’s retweet of the resource, “Why Your Whole Staff Should Be on Twitter” and got a reply. We began to chat about our thoughts on Twitter in the classroom and he even showed me an example of how he uses Twitter with his students. This proves that #Edchats are a great way to communicate with other educators by collaborating and sharing new ideas that can be used to benefit education. I found the #Edchat to be very helpful for students and teachers as they can impart valuable information to participants and viewers.

*Be sure to check my Tweets to see all of the resources I have posted to #educ353

My Twitter: @KaylaDef

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