Thing 5: Digital Storytelling

I've done digital storytelling in the past with students. My younger elementary students did well with Little Bird Tales, and older elementary students loved the artwork in StoryBird. Older elementary and middle school students also enjoyed making book trailers with that old Windows favorite, Photo Story 2 (no longer available to us since the upgrade to Windows 7 and replacement of some Windows machines with Chromebooks). I finally gave up my subscription to VoiceThread this year, after feeling that it just hadn't kept up with the fast-changing world of online apps. We used it for quite a while, but now it just seems kind of drab and clunky.

I turned to PowToon to see if it was worth the hype. They have a great PR department that sends me chirpy emails a few times a week, and I'd been meaning to take it out for a test drive. I tried out the animated presentations, and they have a bit of a learning curve. I could see upper elementary students getting confused and frustrated, while my 7th and 8th graders would probably find PowToon a fun challenge. 

I could see several possibilities for using digital storytelling in general and PowToon in particular. Maybe a math teacher (notoriously hard to get into the library!) could have students create an explainer presentation or video for a math concept. For science, students could present research, explain a concept, or show the results of an experiment. Home and careers or health teachers might find digital storytelling useful for some of their stock projects, like career research, budgeting, or health issue research. Of course, it's easy to think of applications for social studies and ELA--book reviews, book trailers, research...

One of the problems with digital storytelling is that the mention of it often freaks out the teachers in my buildings. A few brave souls have worked with me on these projects (my 5th grade team is great about trying new things!) but the majority still seem intimidated. I'm hoping that, since so much more technology is getting rolled out to classrooms this year, teachers will start to stretch a little and test out some new tools.