I started to really think and work on my digital story quite a while ago.  I used the blog post by Alan Levine, 50+Web 2.0 Ways to Tell A Story.  Reading this helped me to take a deep breath and break it down.  He said:

A story can be broader than a personal tale of a dog (!)– it can be slide show from a vacation , a project report, an idea pitch, a teaser for a class topic. if you are doing this in one of my workshops, time is limited, and you will want to pick something quickly, and not worry about it being worthy of a national art prize.The purpose here is to experience the creative aspects provided by the web tools, not to create a cinematic work. And remember that you will need to find images and other media from public collections that can represent the characters, places, or metaphors in your story- so try to think of ideas that lend themselves to visuals and media.

I know that Coetail is not expecting a cinematic work of art but is more interested in me learning the process and understanding how to use it.  So..here I go.  First I need to brain storm and decide what I want to make a digital story about.  There are so many options it  was hard to decide.  Some of the stories in my head would be WAY to long for this project and others would be boring to the general public.  I decided it needed to be more like a “small moment” that I tell my kids to write.  Not one giant watermelon but a tiny seed.  I GOT it!  My first night in Kathmandu, Nepal.  It is funny, entertaining and certainly creates all different types of emotions for me.  I can also use it in the classroom!

Now that I know my story I need to make a story board to get an idea of how many frames and pictures I will need.  I have decided to use all of the tools I will be asking my first graders to use when they create their digital story.  I have done this before but I am now at a new school and they do not have the same programs.  I consulted with my Tech Literacy colleague and we have decided to have the children use the app Explain Everything to create a digital story.  I had never used the app until this year so I am learning as I go.  I created the story the same way the children will, through Writing Workshop paper (I really wanted to follow the same process I will be asking them to follow).   I then illustrated my story and took pictures of each page.  I put my pictures in dropbox and imported them into Explain Everything to add my vioce.  The kids already know how to save pictures in dropbox from the i-pad and import them!   

Now to make the movie for them see what a digital story will look like and what the end goal will be for their stories.  When we are finished with them in the classroom we will post a link our classroom blog for all of the parents to see.  I hope you enjoy the one I created.  It was certainly a learning curve for me, especially the understanding so I can now teach it.  I will post some of the stories from my First Grade class on this blog when we finish them (we are just now starting this unit).  I am excited that I have really been able to take what I am learning and use this in the classroom.  Here is my small moment digital story:

What I could have done better:

In all this project took what seemed like forever.  Just creating and re-creating the story and brain storming was incredibly painful at times.  I learned that part of that reason was how open it was for what kind of story we were to do.  It took me a long time to “zero” in.  I know exactly how my kids feel!  I needed to narrow things down and to do that I used some of the same things I use with my class.  I used a web and then picked one part of my web to write about.  Now that I have been through this process I think I could certainly do that part faster and use my time a bit more wisely.

I had a hard time lining the pictures up right in Explain Everything.  They move when you touch them and the last one I never could get centered.  I wonder for my teaching purpose if I want to include the words and the pointer or maybe that could be a different project for the kids.

For my purpose in making this an example for my First Graders to see what the end result of their projects would be I had to be careful not to “over do”.  I did find myself “over doing” during the planning process a lot and sticking with the idea of PURPOSE for this project (to learn and understand how to use digital technology to create digital stories AND for me personally create something I can use in my classroom that would be meaningful and make sense)…I had to really work hard not to try and add everything.  I found that music took away from the story, so I took it out.  I think maybe I should have left it as an introduction and ending.  I added frames around my drawings but that also took away and looked really busy, but perhaps the Title Page could have had a frame.  Like all things here in COETAIL..it is a work in progress and will never truly be finished if we really want to learn.  I can’t wait to see my student’s reactions to the story.

If you are an elementary teacher and want to use Explain Everything for creating digital stories, I highly recommend it.  I do not know it all yet, but I can certainly help with the planning process and ideas on how to use it with writing workshop.