Tell Me a Story
For the past few months, I have been working with four-4th grade classes and four-5th grade classes on a project I developed called Tell Me a Story. I am winding down at work, three more days to go, and I just finally finished posting their finished products on my school website.
Their digital stories, made with Photostory, and their podcasts and book reviews are on the Student Gallery page on our website.
A little of the back story… I was hired as the school library media specialist at my school 7 years ago. At that time, there was a 4th/5th grade ‘research program’ in place which was taught by the computer teacher. This irked me to no end. Research classes are the in the librarian’s realm! Well, in any case, I fought hard for, and eventually won, the right to revamp this program. The program as it stands now is a once a week, one hour class, taught by myself with the support of the computer teacher. We use the resources of the library and the computer lab (which are adjacent to each other). Unfortunately, the classroom teacher is only there for 20 minutes of the class (the other 40 are a prep) – I know, not the ideal situation, but sometimes you gotta work with what you have. In any case, I have developed several research projects for my students (see my e-portfolio) which are project-based and often tied to themes of tolerance or social justice. Tell Me a Story was an attempt at creating something that focused on multicultural understanding (my school has a very diverse population) while incorporating technology tools not used before at my school. Grant money helped purchase digital audio recorders and headsets.
I think what amazed me the most was how easily my students picked up the technology. As teachers, it took us awhile to figure out and master Audacity, mixing soundtracks, importing audio tracks, podcasting… honestly, for my fifth graders it was a piece of cake! The results, in many cases, was incredible! And they loved creating for an audience – whether it was through writing, speaking, images or some combination of the three.
Yesterday, fifth graders came around for yearbook signing. Thanks, Amir, for your comment, I really loved our class. You made my day!
