My Vision of Digital Storytelling in my Classroom

I’m not currently teaching but I plan to teach social studies in the near future at the middle school level. The coolest things I find with social studies is how encompassing and compatible it can be with all subject areas. In subject areas like language arts and reading a lot of the materials are based on historical events, people, and stories. In both math and science, it’s important that students understand the background or the reasoning behind a concept, formula, equation and /or discovery. This is where history comes in. Basically everything has a story and it’s vital that we tell that story, so that we can learn from the past in order for us to build a better tomorrow.

With that in mind it’s only a natural fit for innovation through technology to be openly embraced in my class and rest assure every opportunity to integrate some form of technology in my curriculum will be taken advantage of. One form of technology that is rapidly showing up in many classrooms across the nation is digital storytelling.

As a history teacher, I can see my students using digital storytelling to make presentations, projects on different historical eras, animated timelines, summarizing a chapter through pictorial storytelling with voiceover, etc. The possibilities are endless and I can surely see how my students’ creativity, critical thinking, and diligence skills amongst other things will improve. (a major BONUS to integrating technology into the classroom !!!) 

One of my favorite historical topics to focus on is the Harlem Renaissance. This short lived era starting in the early 1920s due to the Great Migration of African Americans out of the south to the North, East and Far West exemplifies how history of that time period was consciously captured through some many different mediums such as music, art, literature, Social Awareness/Political activism. 

An awesome digital media project, I can see my middle school 7^th grade American History students doing is retelling, showcasing or creating their own interpretation of a historical aspect of the Harlem Renaissance through using digital storytelling programs such YouTube, online blog, Slideshare, Prezi, etc. The major goal of a project like this would be to allow the students to become amateur historians that are capable of actively analyzing, collecting, and piecing relevant information together to create a quality project that anyone can view and walk away learning something new.  Students will also be expected to create a project that accommodates different learning styles by using video, audio, text, and/or graphics to illustrate their topic. 

I plan to provide my students additional tutorials on how to use and create their projects through programs such as prezi, bloggers, and YouTube. I will make sure to create a package that includes “how to” links and give a mini lesson on how to navigate through the internet to find answers to their “how to” questions on using programs such as prezi…

There are a plethora of valid websites and resources in the local library that students should be able utilize to gather information on the Harlem Renaissance. Since one of the major objectives of this project is to make my students embrace the historian role, they will be the ones to actively find their research on their topics. I will service as a facilitator that provides guidance and to make sure that they are staying on task.