As I have been planning this activity over the past few weeks, I already had a pretty good idea as to what I would include in my teacher sample. First, I decided on which topic choice my presentation would be about (topic choices include native Florida Indian tribes or early Florida explorers). I chose to do my digital story on Hernando De Soto. Next, I decided which program I would use to create my digital story. I am pretty comfortable with the use of Powerpoint software, and chose to use this platform to create my story.
The first thing I did was go back to my curriculum page and review the instructions I provided for my students, as well as the pieces that should be included into the presentation. Since I chose to do my presentation on an explorer, I made sure to include the necessary information:
- Information about their life and their exploration of Florida (where and when were they born? When did they begin their exploration, etc..)
- Their motivation for becoming an explorer (were they searching for gold? Trying to claim land?)
- How they got along with or affected Native Americans (did they bring disease to the tribes? Did they get along with them?)
- Map of your explorer's exploration
as well as the other criteria that goes for all students:
- A timeline of at least 5 important events you found about your tribe or explorer (should be completed seperately using Paint and then embedded into your presentation).
- 5 graphic images (these can be picture taken and uploaded from a digital camera, a picture you find online, etc...)
- List of webpages you used to find information on your tribe or explorer.
During the creation of my digital story, I came across a very frustrating experience with embedding video into the presentation. I spent over an hour trying to figure out how to save a video found on http://www.youtube.com/ to my computer so that I could include the video in my Powerpoint presentation. No matter how many times I tried to find instructions on Youtube's help page and by googling instructions on doing so, I was unable to figure out how to save video files to my computer. I finally just gave up and decided not to include a video in my presentation. If anybody knows how to save a Youtube video to your computer, I would very much appreciate the help.
Other than this setback, I found the process of compiling information and images into a Powerpoint presentation to be very easy and quick. I also used the Paint application (as required in this assignment) to create a timeline, and pasted this images to my presentation. I also found Paint to be very user friendly and easy to use.
I think that with the right amount of teacher modeling and media support, this activity can be a great way to make social studies more engaging for students. I also think that exposing students to different types of technology at a young age is important for them. You can view my teacher sample of this activity by visiting my curriculum page or by simply watching the embedded video below.
Megan,
ReplyDeleteI must say that I really enjoyed your digital storytelling project. This is something that I am sure your students will have fun creating. While reading your reflection I see that you also had problems embedding video into your presentation. I had the same exact problem. I found myself using GOOGLE to figure out how to put my video into the presentation.
I also love the fact that you found a creative way to teaching social studies through digital storytelling. I used social studies for my project as well.
Hi,
ReplyDeleteI liked the detail you put into your digital storytelling project, but might I suggest less text on each slide and thus more slides. Kids and sometimes even adults tend to not read everything if there are a lot of words on one slide.
Also, I noticed that you said you chose Powerpoint because you were familiar with it. I'm not saying that it's a bad thing, but it might be good to branch out. I wrote my curriculum page with the intention of encouraging my students to learn new software through the creation of their project.