Animoto- A Tool Used For Digital Storytelling

I tried a free trial of Animoto, which is a digital storytelling tool, and I found it  extremely easy to use. These kind of simplistic tools catch my interest for the sake of my learners as well as myself. Technology can easily get frustrating and time consuming if you don't know what your doing.

I created a story about my lovable cat, whom I had to put down almost a year ago, and my sisters dog. I created this story to test the waters with Animoto and see if it could be of interest to use in my future classes. It turns out, it is! Animoto has easy upload features, songs and backgrounds you can choose from. Here's my sample I created using Animoto. Check it out!-->My Unconditional Love

Digital storytelling can be a very useful tool to use with you students. Students could create a story about ANYTHING they wish! Unless of course, you decide to limit the topics or choose a specific content area. A specific content area that digital storytelling would work very well with would be English. You could have students create a storyline first, or sentences, and then have them find pictures to upload that go along with their sentences, or story. This way your placing the emphasis on the writing, instead of just pictures. Another way to use digital storytelling in the classroom could be to incorporate social studies using digital storytelling. You could possibly focus on the history of one specific time/event of history, or even on specific person. Students would then be more motivated to learn about a specific topic in history by having to put together their own story about it. Since my focus as an educator is ESL, I would most likely give students the freedom to make their own story once, to get a sense of who they are or learn a little bit about each of my students. Then, I would do a second story that is more language and content specific. Students could possibly create their own narrative to work on their writing and language skills. By leaving the students a choice in what to create, they usually are more willing to put in a better effort, it they are interested in the topic.

“It's like everyone tells a story about themselves inside their own head. Always. All the time. That story makes you what you are. We build ourselves out of that story.” ― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

I read "Educational uses of Digital StoryTelling." “Today the use of digital storytelling is being practiced in neighborhood community centers, schools, libraries and businesses, by novice technology users to those with advanced skills. In the field of education, teachers and their students, from early childhood classrooms through graduate school, are using digital storytelling in many different content areas and across a wide range of grade levels." Digital storytelling makes it possible for anyone to become a creative storyteller. First, you must come up with a topic, conduct research depending on the topic chosen, write a script, and finally develop an interesting story. Your story can be combined with different types of multimedia including images, audio, computer-generated text, video clips, and music. I also read an article called "7 things you should know about Digital Storytelling."
“Digital stories can be instructional, persuasive, historical, or reflective .Some learning theorists believe that as a pedagogical technique, storytelling can be effectively applied to nearly any subject.” This is quite interesting and also seems true. If you think about the content areas, it would exciting to have student try a cross-curricular story incorporating two of their favorite subject areas.

Emphasing on “writing a script” shifts the students away from trying to find images to illustrate their story. Students are usually allowed to choose their own topic which is extremely important and can  increase students interest and motivation in created such a story. Digital storytelling is nice because it can work with any grade level, so teachers can give as much support or as little support as needed. Using digital storytelling in an ESOL class can help give students confidence in their writing, as well as share their work with others. I would use digital storytelling with my students to help encourage them to be creative with writing and enjoy writing. Writing can be fun for almost anyone as long as you enjoy the topic. “Even with personal stories, we encourage students to try to integrate instructional elements tied to content so that the final version of the story has at least some connection to education.” This is obviously integral in using digital storytelling in your classroom. There always needs to be some educational tie to the students work. A good educational tie with digital storytelling, if your students are new to the language, would be having students develop their language through their writing and other students writing. "After the initial versions of the scripts are written, students should participate in small group “story circles” in which they share their ideas for their stories, read draft versions of their scripts and provide  constructive criticism and suggestions that can be used to improve the scripts and the overall plan for the final stories.” It is also essential that students understand the “writing process” at any age which includes: Pre-writing, drafting, revising, editing, and publishing.