Thing 5: Digital Storytelling and Presentation Tools

I explored a lot of tools over the course of Thing 5 and am excited to share them here.

Animoto

Here’s the Animoto I created using my stock collection of photos Summer at the Shore

I was amazed at how easy this was and, more importantly, how much fun I had doing it!  

Since making my video at the end of December I have had the opportunity to work with classes in my middle school creating booktrailers.

There are so many important embedded skills in creating a book trailer. Students must:

  • Determine what aspects of the story are important to convey in their booktrailer
  • Summarize each of the main ideas in 90 characters or less
  • Identify photos that are appropriate to each of the main ideas
  • Use search skills to locate those photos
  • Create citations for those photos
  • Due to the nature of the project our students, for the most part, self managed their time.

In the end the book trailers were a huge success and many have been added to the library catalog where they can be viewed by students looking for their next great read.

Meograph

This is a tool that I got interested in this summer that I feel lends itself especially well to Socials Studies. I was able to intrigue a few teachers into trying with their students only to discover that you can’t create Meographs using Internet Explorer. Unfortunately that is the only browser our school will allow us to use so I have had to abandon the idea of doing this with students. I do however have a few teachers that have expressed interest in creating their four dimensional stories at home and bringing them in to share with the students.

Xtranormal

Loved this one. Haven’t identified yet how to best incorporate this into a learning activity with the students so I put it on the back burner for now.

Voki

Added to my homepage here and when I redo my library webpage I plan on incorporating it there.

Prezi

I love Prezi. However, I felt that using it with an entire class would be overwhelming as I’m new to it too. To incorporate it slowly I used Prezi when presenting to a group of 8th grade students and, as I had hoped, some of them were interested enough to approach me about it outside of class. This has given me the opportunity to see first hand what challenges the students face when using Prezi and identify how I can best assist them in those challenges. In a few weeks I have Project Based Learning Groups that will be using Prezi collaboratively and am guardedly optimistic  I know there will be problems but I’m certain the students will excel at the task.

Kerpoof

I will be using Kerpoof next month with 6th grade Science classes to create books on the biomes. The teacher and I are in our initial planning stages so any advice is appreciated.

Overall I have to say this has been my favorite of the “things” we have done for this class as I really see some great opportunities to use these tools with teachers and students.

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About Kim Nemeth

Hello and welcome to my blog. I am a High School Library Media Specialist in beautiful Saratoga Springs New York. I am an avid reader and am addicted to learning. This blog was originally started as part of the Cool Tools for Schools project in 2012. Since then I have continued to participate in Cool Tools for Schools and add my thoughts here. I found this blog to be an excellent place to refer to when I needed an idea or had a tick mark in my head and needed a reminder. I would love comments and feedback on my posts. Enjoy!
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2 Responses to Thing 5: Digital Storytelling and Presentation Tools

  1. Hi Kim, sorry for the IE incompatibility … it’s just not modern enough a browser to handle all the media calls Meograph uses. But if you install ChromeFrame for IE, or use Chrome/Firefox/Safari, we should work for you just fine!

  2. pollyalida says:

    That’s a shame that you only have IE at school, I don’t know why so many schools stick with IE. Maddening. How nice for the creator of Meogaph to comment here!

    Sounds like the book trailer project was a huge success. Congrats!

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