Digital Storytelling- No Tall Tale

Digital storytelling can be a very useful tool to capture and keep students’ attention.  This technique blends pictures, music, recorded messages, text, and whatever else you want to put in it. In lament’s terms, it is a pimped-out slide show. Although it seems basic and simple, there are many factors that come into play when digital storytelling.

You must have a clear purpose. Stories can range in topics from personal experience to historical events to scientific breakthroughs. There is no constraint as to what type of story is being told. Also, you need a dramatic question. This will get the students thinking and make them search for the answer throughout the rest of the story. If there is music, be sure to have relative music, not just some stock sounds from your computer. It must add to the presentation. Possibly the most important factor is the quality of images. If the pictures are grainy, over-stretched, boring, or irrelevant, no one, possibly not even you, will want to pay attention. Digital storytelling can be a good way to incorporate these things into a concise 2 to 10 minute presentation that will hold your students’ attention.

Podcasts- Adding One More Thing To Multi-task With

            In the “on-the-go” world that we live in today, one way to receive information, without slowing down to read the paper or watch the news, is by podcast. The term “podcast” comes from the combination of the words “iPod” and “broadcast.” These news shorts can be short 1 to 2 minute audio bites or 5 to 10 minute video clips.  Basic podcasts are strictly audio and enhanced podcasts include audio, video, and potentially slides and an embedded URL. The most complex form is the video podcast (vodcast), which may be a movie or TV show.

One way to receive podcasts is through subscription. Many websites have and RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feed. Through iTunes or another podcast client, you can request to receive the podcasts from an RSS feed automatically. This eliminates the time taken to find such sources of information and groups them in one convenient place. Once on your podcast client, you can download them to your iPod or other mp3 player to listen and learn on the go. Podcasts make it easy and convenient to get news anywhere at any time.

Twitter- 140 Characters or Bust

“Twitter” is a social networking site that is unique in many ways. Unlike “Facebook” or “MySpace,” where someone has their status (which can be personalized), an information section (which can be personalized), and even games (which can be personalized), “Twitter” allows an individual to have 140 characters for each post. That’s it. If “Facebook” and “MySpace” are considered “childish” or “juvenile,” then “Twitter” can be considered the fully matured version of social networking. No fancy backgrounds, no games to ignore, just straight-forward information.

This micro-blogging site allows for people to post their thoughts and “follow” others’. One form of discussion can be found in “hashtags.” These are words placed at the beginning of a post, or “tweet,” that categorized the statement. People can search for specific “hashtags” to find others with similar interests. “Twitter” allows businessmen to keep up on each other’s progress, a friend to find out what’s going on Thursday night, or even a teacher to connect with their students.

delicious- Social Bookmarking

“delicious” is a website that allows you to group internet resources based on tags that you create. After creating an account, the site brings your homepage. Here, you can create your resource links. To do so, you copy the URL of the website that you want to bookmark and paste it in the correct area of “delicious.” Next, you create your own title and tags for the article. This is the trademark of “delicious.” The site automatically groups your resources according to the tags that you assign yourself. This is a great way to not only categorize helpful sites, but to increase the accessibility to them. As long as there is a computer with internet access, you may access “delicious” and your resources.

In addition to allowing the categorizing of resources, “delicious” offers you a way to connect with others. Though the website’s search engine, you can see if anyone else has used the same tag/tags as you. This gives you the ability to use sources that others have marked as useful.