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Saturday, April 9, 2016

Digital Stories

One thing I want my students to come out of my class knowing is that there are many different ways to publish their thoughts. I love using digital stories with them as one of those ways. I use the program Pixie, which I know may be outdated as technology goes-but I know how it works and find it's very easy for the students to manipulate as well.

We use them to make stories about Moms for Mother's Day (which is why I'm posting about it right now). If it's something you wanted to try, you still have time. All I do is open 6 slides and save them with the student's name. The kids do all the rest of the work! They write the text (and learn text is not just something you do on a phone), they draw the illustrations, they record themselves narrating and they choose the background music (I think some of my parents must be Miami Vice fans-that's the type of background music their child chose for them :). The program puts it all together as a movie that you can easily share. I ask moms to submit a picture of themselves, that way I don't have to use names. I do have a class website where I upload them after our presentation and I don't use any names on there.

These are some examples from last year (I don't want to give away the surprise yet for this year).












Even if you didn't use them for Mother's Day-there are tons of things you can do with them--the kids could write poems, or their own fairy tales. The possibilities are endless!




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