Teacher is reflecting during the
assignment as students react to activity and by observation of motivation and
engagement in the creation of the online books. During reflective conversation
with student, teacher will take notes on how the student felt and evaluated the
assignment. After total completion teacher will make notes on this lesson plan
as to what went well and what needed adjustment.
Teacher will then have a great
big, genuine, and heavy, sigh of relief.
That was the end of the first
draft, then I implemented my relevant and innovative learning scenario and this
is what I learned.
The point to this assignment was
to tie it into my action plan and to see if digital storytelling helped with
motivation and engagement for special education students. I found it did both.
They were very highly motivated to continue to go to the StoryJumper site and
also did it at home. They kept asking to go to the computer so that they could
work on their books. They were very engaged and shared their adventure with
their peers. One student would discover something and tell the others, learning
happened like a wild fire. I didn’t show them much about the site; I feel the
students can discover just about everything that the site has by discovery.
That is exactly what happened and it was a joy to watch.
After completing the assignment,
I discovered that the students were indeed far more engaged with this project
than I had ever seen them. They were happy to work for two straight hours. I
had to stop them or they would have worked on it all day. They discovered very
quickly that they could download their own images and some of the stories
changed after they found out they could truly customize their book. In fact, I
had to limit the time they spent searching for other pictures, they were losing
sight that the point of the project was to write a story, not create a scrap
book, as one student said.
I added making a storyboard
because the students were off task and downloading the images from the internet and they were not being
consistent with their stories. StoryJumper displays two pages at a time and some of
my special education students had a hard time being consistent from display
page to display page. Not everyone liked doing a storyboard or had no idea what
a storyboard was. I would start with diagramming a story first before
introducing StoryJumper.com. next time and developing storyboards.
I discovered their literary
skills better than the assessments we do. I saw them in action and I now know
what a particular student needs to develop skills in punctuation, character
development, capitalization, and the other general mechanics of writing skills.
I think I learned more than they did. I certainly learned about them as individuals
and that helped me make many different connections for further lessons and
skills, and who they really are.
I am also able to view their
books at any time to check on their progress and to help parents decide if they
want to purchase the hard copy. I love this Web 2.0 tool!
We all had a great time doing
this and I am excited about finding other sites for other subjects that will be
this engaging for them. I think the interactivity is the key to holding their
interest and that they aren’t constrained by the classroom. They can define
their own boundaries and leave the real world’s frustrations behind them. I
thought they would race through this and we would finish at the end of the
week. They are taking their time and they are not ready to stop. Their stories
are just beginning and I will use this during language arts periods to help
them remember punctuation and mechanics. I learned this is limitless.
No comments:
Post a Comment