Digital Story

The Big Ideas I got from this weeks blog post is that digital story telling is a fun form of presenting information. It is like telling a story to someone over the phone with accompanying snapshots of each event. I think that this could be a good resource to share among teachers because teachers could swap lessons or presentations that utilize digital stories. Also the constant transition between audio and photo if done well does a good job of maintaining the viewers attention.

Educational applications could to present information to students using this medium such as a lesson. However, I think it would be entirely too time consuming and take up valuable class time to have the children to construct a story of their own. I had a difficult time getting my microphone to register enough of my voice to be heard over the music. It would seem that there would be endless problems having the students make their own.

One thing I was curious about was the fact that the program seemed to insert a small transition of silent audio between slides. Is there anyway to control that, or was I just too slow clicking the stop recording button.

Digital Story

A main thing that struck me about todays class was how quickly technology has shaped the classroom. A decade or two ago this class would cover about one tenth of the technology addressed in this course due to the fact it was too expensive or nonexistent. Another thing that struck me was how easy it is to construct a digital story. I feel as though I have a decent enough grasp on the program that I could tell one of my friends how to use the program. I also thought that the examples were a great source of ideas due to how much they varied in their acquisition of the photo as well as the narrative made by each individual student. It definitely gave me a few ideas of what I am going to do my story on and where I am going to get my pictures.

I think this is a great tool for students who have become either bored or disillusioned with writing. Writing something on paper quickly gets boring and having a teacher type if up for you and put it on fancy paper can only go so far. However, this method allows the children to see their ideas to come into fruition not just in words but images and would definitely get them excited about the writing process.
Another application I think that would be interesting for digital story telling is to have the students use a digital story to make a research project much more interesting. Like a podcast it would have students working together and learning from each other, but it adds the visual aspect that would give the finished product much appeal. In addition, finding photos relating to their topic would help them gain more knowledge through making visual connections and sense of the historical time period.

One question I still have is if there are any free or affordable programs for windows that allow for the use of video in the digital storytelling process.

Pod Casts

The use of the podcast presents an exciting new application for technology in the classroom. The podcasts in useful in that it fosters a sort of academic community among the children that are making the podcast because they must do the research on the topic. It also allows for a greater understanding of the topic due to the fact that the children must research it then decide what they think is important. I also think it is important due to the fact that it may expose kids who do not have a large amount of technological access at home to a fun use of technology.

The educational applications beyond what is mentioned above is that is provides for a catalog of knowledge the students can access through linking up with other classes that do podcasts. Another application could be to record important assemblies or lectures and post it on the school website, so that children who are absent have an opportunity to keep up.

My main question is still where to find more sounds and effects that are free to use and are not copyrighted because what we found in the production of our podcast seemed very limited.