Via Kim Cofino on Google Buzz, I found the Google SearchStories Video Creator.
I see some great possibilities in the classroom for it.

• Pre-reading activities
• Book summaries
• Introduction /background knowledge
• Discussion starters

Doug Peterson has already blogged about his vision of potential uses in education, as has Kelly Tenkely from iLearn Technology.

You will create your story in three steps.

1. Write
2. Add Music
3. Preview and upload

Add your search terms

Add music

Here is a quick example, I created.

Using visuals to create and support stories is a skill we should encourage and nurture in our students . It should be obvious by now that I consider storytelling an integral part of a teacher’s toolbox. You can read about the Need for Storytelling and Why Storytelling Can/Should Be Anywhere/Everywhere and will understand why storytelling can fulfill many roles in the learning process.

Storytelling:

• helps us pass on knowledge
• connects the overwhelming flow of information,  so our brains can digest and remember it better
• uses a format that students of today are familiar and comfortable with

Now add visuals to the mix…

According to Wikipedia, Visual literacy is

the ability to interpret, negotiate, and make meaning from information presented in the form of an image. Visual literacy is based on the idea that pictures can be “read” and that meaning can be communicated through a process of reading.

It is hard sometimes to make/find images available to your students (especially for the younger ones) that they can use in their digital storytelling projects or for creative writing. I am always hesitant to let them loose on Google or Flickr to find their own images, because of copyright issues, but also inappropriate content.

I wanted to share a Flickr set of the Travel Bear from Argentina, China, Egypt, Costa Rica, Peru and Italy. There are all in one place and licensed under Creative Commons to share and use with your students.

In the past, students have made up stories with images from the bear for younger students by using PhotoStory

Students could choose different images from the set to create whole new stories made up by them. Sixth graders created short movies for their first grade buddies.
Andrea Hernandez from edtechworkshop encouraged her first graders to choose an image from the Travel Bear’s Italy Blog, download the image into Pixie (or you could use KidPix or TuxPaint ) and the six year olds wrote a postcard style letter to Jose, the bear.

Here is a slideshow of images available from the travel bear around the world. I would love to hear what kind of creative writing projects you have come up with by encouraging your students to use creative commons images from the web? Please share…

After the success of Skyping in Author and illustrator Mike Artell (from Louisiana) into our sixth grade classes this past February, the fifth grade classes had the opportunity to visit with Jan and Phil Huling (from New Jersey).

The Hulings are the author and illustrator of “Puss in Cowboy Boots”, a remake of the traditional fairy tale story of “Puss in Boots” with a setting in Texas/USA. While the Hulings visit schools to talk to students regularly, it was their first time to visit via Skype.

Just like Mike Artell, they are exploring the opportunities and possibilities a virtual visit can bring to students around the world, who otherwise would never have the opportunity for these experiences. Thank you to all authors, illustrators, artists who are pioneering and paving the way for more opportunities like these. Pssst, if you an author, illustrator or want to share your passion for your work with students virtually, please contact me to arrange for a Skype visit).

Students had read the Huling’s book previously in class and had created their own fairy tale story from traditional ones, yet retold from a different character’s perspective. Students asked the Hulings many questions, such as how long did it take to write the story or illustrate the book? When did they know that they wanted to be a writer or an artist?

I was very proud of one student’s question, when she asked if Jan Huling was afraid of infringing on someone’s copyright when she used the “Puss in Boots” as the storyline of her own book. It was the same groups of 5th graders, who a few weeks earlier were taught  About Using Images off Wikipedia, while creating a photostory as a book report of a bibliography.

It seemed that that student had made a CONNECTION to what we had discussed before. While she might not understand  all of the copyright laws (who does?), she seemed to have UNDERSTANDING and AWARENESS of the issue.

Here are 90 seconds (time limit imposed by Flickr) of the Skype conference with Jan & Phil Huling, including the copyright question and Jan’s answer. The recording was done using a Flip Camera and it was edited in iMovie09.

I watched this recording from one of Alvin Trusty‘s presentations and thought it was well worth sharing.

He gives great ideas and logistical how-to in order to create better PowerPoints. Here are some techniques and points I will want to experiment and consider further:

• motion path
• animation grow/shrink
• graying out items on list
• “fade smoothly” transition
• cropping images within PowerPoint
• contrast/repetition/alignment/proximity

At the same time his presentation is about Copyright. I can’t decide which part is the better? They are very cleverly interwoven.
Here are the books that Alvin recommends:

How to Create a Great PowerPoint – Take 2.0 from Alvin Trusty on Vimeo.

I checked out PhotoPeach.

Our idea is to help users tell better stories online using photos. Our inspiration for this service came from enjoying sharing photos with friends in real life.

You can create a rich slideshow in seconds to engage your friends or family in a natural way. This is done by allowing two-way commenting right at each photo in the show and automatically pausing so you have time to express yourself before continuing.

We also support zooming comments, sound-effect smilies, and music so you can elaborate on your story further.

You have heard again and again: “A picture is worth a thousand words” but what if you could add a thousand words to your photos, and some music? We think the whole slideshow is greater than the sum of the photos, words, and music.

The concept is similar to Animoto. You upload images from your computer, Facebook, Picasa or Flickr, then pick a song and PhotoPeach will automatically create a video that you can e-mail or embed easily. The catch is that the slideshow has to be public in order to embed it on a classroom blog for example. Before I can use a service like PhotoPeach with my students, I need to investigate a little further.

From their About Section,  I found out that :

Visitors without an account can write their name and comment on your slideshow without signing up.

This concerns me, since I will have no control over who can and will add what . The chances that something inappropriate will end up on something that is intended for academic use are too great. Is there a comment moderation feature before ANYONE can leave a comment on students’ slideshows? I am looking for a feature similar to VoiceThread .

Another issue that we, who deal with younger students, have is the e-mail issue. Does PhotoPeach allow multiple sign-ins under the same username?

I tried it out with my photos of the 366images from January 2009. There are two choice to embed the slideshow, as a Story or as a Spiral show.

Technorati Tags: Digital Storytelling

Piclits came to my attention via Kevin Jarrett’s amazing NCS-Tech blog.

PicLits.com is a creative writing site that matches beautiful images with carefully selected keywords in order to inspire you. The object is to put the right words in the right place and the right order to capture the essence, story, and meaning of the picture.

I gave it a try and immediately felt the power that writing or expressing yourself gives you. The images you can choose from are inspiring and literally scream for words to be added to express YOU!

See the full PicLit at PicLits.com

I am thinking of the possibilities to introduce our students to free writing. Even if you don’t have access to this site at your school, you could still collect Creative Commons images from Flickr or other sources and practice “Inspired Picture Writing”.

My grandfather, Siegfried Rosenthal, never spoke to me about his experiences the night of November 9th, 1938, Kristallnacht. The night that the SS came to his door and arrested him in front of his seven year old son and pregnant wife for simply being a Jew and taken to a Concentration camp. He did write his thoughts down at one point. I am glad he did, otherwise his story, his voice would have been lost to me, my daughters and their future children.

That brings up the question of each of our own responsibility of telling our stories, so they will not forget. My grandfather wrote his story on a typewriter. That piece of paper was passed down to my father and then to me. How long, how many generations will it take before that paper gets lost ,destroyed or vanishes forever?I

I offered to give a presentation to students, when each of my children were in 6th grade, which is traditionally (here in the US) the time that they get an introduction to the Holocaust in Social Studies. I created a PowerPoint, the tool I had available at that time.

As I continue to think about the importance of storytelling, media literacy and teaching students with “their” media in order to reach theme, to make a connection.  I feel it is time to re-tell my grandfather and our family’s story. Trying to make the words jump off that paper, that my grandfather wrote so many years ago. I am sad, that the technology was not as readily available before 1993, when he passed away. Today I could have filmed and recorded him easily across the distance between Germany and the US.

Today is 9-11, yes, the 9th of November, as the date is written in German (first the day, then the month).

Today, 70 years ago, is remembered as the Kristallnacht, or the night of the broken glass. It is the day  the Nazis orchestrated open attacks on Jewish individuals, property, and businesses. It was the night they destroyed synagogues and started burning books of Jewish authors. The night Hitler showed the world what he was planning to do with Jews and the night Germany demonstrated their reaction about standing up or defending their fellow citizens and neighbors of Jewish faith. The reaction was to let it happen…

It was also the night that thousands of Jews were arrested and taken to concentration camps. My grandfather Siegfried Rosenthal was one of them.

We can never forget… the story has to be told… My grandfather never spoke to us about what he experienced…but he did take the time to write it down… I translated it into English so my children (who speak German) and their future families (who will most likely not speak German anymore) will never forget…

I’d like to answer your question about my past and about my life.
When 1933 the hunt against us German Jews started, which sounded absurd and unthinkable for us, since 12000 Jews died on the field of honor during the War from 1914-1918.
The thought, that someone could lead an annihilation  process against us Jews would have never occurred to me. A cousin of mine, who served in the marines from 1912-1918 and was decorated with the Iron Cross I and II, told me during that time: „..But we are Germans, fought for Germany and were honored and decorated officers. They would never do anything to us.
That’s what all Jews believed, since we believed ourselves good Germans.
I overheard a conversation between a husband and a  wife, friends of mine, who were from Poland, but have been settled in Germany for many years. The wife told her husband, that he was mistaken, that never anything what happened to the Jews in Russia would happen here, since the Germans were civilized people and would never allow such an atrocity.“

She was wrong, it got much worse than Russia.

I was in Germany during 1933 – June 1939.
I must mention that my father, who was an old men, was living with me when I tried to emigrate. He did not want to leave , since in his words „ you don´t transplant an old tree“.

I experienced bitter times during that period in Germany.
People who knew me were not allowed to greet me when they saw me, since it was forbidden to greet someone Jewish. We were outlawed.

As the older generation knows well,  „Der Stürmer“, distributed sickening, humiliating and untruthful things about us. I ripped this paper in front of a Nazis  and threw it in his face, when he showed it to me during 1935. I can thank my father that nothing happened to me. He was well known and respected in the German-National circles, since he was a co-founder of the German Red Cross in Wattenscheid and had received numerous high decoration during the First World War.

On November 9th, the so called Kristallnacht, a police officer , who came to our front door, asked me politely to come with him to the police station in regards to an investigation. When I arrived there, I saw that already several other people had been arrested. They had to stand with their faces against the wall. I was yelled at and had to face the wall too.

Later we were herded under floods of insults, into a huge truck and taken to a prison in Herne.
From there we were loaded into a train. We did not know where to.
I must admit that the police, who guarded us, behaved very correctly towards us.
The train stopped at night in the middle of nowhere. . They opened the doors of the train and the SS hit us with the back of their riffles out of the wagons. Weather young or old, we were herded across the fields to the concentration camp Oranienburg. An old teacher of mine, way over 60 years old, fell and I took him on my shoulders and carried him to the KZ. When I took him off my shoulders an SS officer hit me in my neck, because I had helped him. There we stood , around 800 “prisoners” for 12 hours against a wire fence. No one was allowed to move until we were taken to the barracks.

I don’t want to talk about the details of the camp and the life there. My father died while I was in the camp. A short while later I was released. I received a letter from the camp officials that I had to leave Germany within 3 weeks. I had to sell my properties for pennies. I tried to receive Asylum for my family and me in Bolivia, where in the end emigrated too. We stayed there until 1946, when we went to Buenos Aires, Argentina. I followed my sons back to Germany in 1970 and live since then in Walldorf.

You ask me if I still feel German? I want to answer this question honestly. Us, German Jews, were better and more enthusiastic Jews, than many others, who called themselves German.
Prrof is that 12000 Jews died for Germany during WWI. Many highly decorated officers of the first World War were transported to Poland and shot or gassed.

Can I still feel as German as I used to?
I DO have the German citizenship…….

A picture is worth a thousand words… A thousand words can tell a story…
Using words as a visual give a different impression than text alone. Visuals can allow us to “see” a concept or, a relationship that text alone might not make apparent. It can tell a visual story of words, keywords, thoughts, text, and data or create a summary.
A relatively new tool, called Wordle, is allowing anyone, without registering to create so called Word Clouds by entering keywords. Create your own Word Cloud with or for your students at http://www.wordle.net

Click on “Create” to start you own Word Cloud.

Allow keywords to tell a story:

• Create a visual of a concept
• Make a summary
• Collaboratively work on a word cloud as a group
• Write a poem
• Spelling words
• Showcase characteristics of a protagonist in a book
• Lyrics of a song
• Essay

You can directly type in keywords into the text box in Wordle or create a file in a Word, WordPad or Notepad. You then can copy and paste your keyword list into the text box when you have it complete and refer back to it, when you want to edit the list.

In order to treat two words as one keyword in your word cloud, use the tilde character ~ between the words that go together. The tilde will be converted to a space when drawing the words.
This following Word Cloud was created collaboratively by educators around the world, who contributed keywords that came to their mind when thinking about Digital Storytelling. Words that appear larger were used by more contributors.

Once you have created a Word Cloud, you have different choices of how to save your creation.

• Print – print to paper or print to .PDF file
• Take a screenshot- Open in Window, then use Print Screen button on your keyboard or screencasting software, such as Jing, Camtasia, Snag it
• Save to gallery – give your creation a title and description

Once you cloud is saved to the gallery, two new choices will be available:

• Save to Del.icio.us account – tag with wordle and other descriptive words.
• Copy code to create a link on your blog or website.

Other resources:

• The Power of Tags, The Power of Words
  A Wordle Tutorial by Bob Sprankle
• Using Word clouds in a Lesson
  by Box of Tricks

Please leave a link to the post if you have blogged about using Wordle to tell a story in a lesson!

Fourth Graders in our school study the state of Florida and “Explorers”. Traditionally they would research and create a written book report.

THIS YEAR…

The social studies teachers assigned one explorer to a group of 3 students. They did their research in the Media Center from a wide variety of sources.

1. The teacher created an account with Mixbook and shared the e-mail and password with all of his students.
2. On Mixbook the teacher created a new book and added as many double pages as there are groups. One double page per explorer
3. We had a brief lesson in TechConect about what copyright is. Is it OK to scan in an image you find from a book to use in your book? Almost all of the 4th graders knew that you needed the permission from the author of the book, if they wanted to use an image from a book. When I asked if it was OK to use an image that you find somewhere on the internet, it did not seem so clear to them. Over half of the students felt it was all right to just save it and then use in their report. After clearing up that misunderstanding…
4. We visited Wikipedia.org and searched for their explorers. Once they found an image, they needed to verify the licensing and that it was indeed an image in the public domain. It seems important to remind them that they can not simply assume that the image is free for them to use.
5. Quick demo on how to right-click and “save as” an image to the hard drive and how to use tabs in the browser to switch back to the open Mixbook project then locate and upload the saved image.
6. Students added their research content and selected their own layout and background.
7. Together with their classmates they produced a collection of explorer reports, learning along the way the value of collaboration and collective knowledge.

Create your own photo book in seconds! Click here!

I just happen to find an article in Edutopia, where Karen Kliegman (A media specialist who I had the pleasure of meeting in person at FETC 2008), was interviewed. She had another fantastic approach to take the traditional explorer report off the page and into the web 2.0 world.

She assigns each of her fourth-grade students an explorer to research — Columbus, Magellan, Ponce de Leon, or one of their questing contemporaries. After gathering facts, students locate images of the explorer or draw their own. They then create a vodcast, or video podcast, about the explorer’s journey using Photo Story, a free program from Microsoft that allows users to upload digital pictures and add narration and background music. Students then log on to digital-mapping programs such as Google Maps or CommunityWalk, with which they can trace their explorers’ journeys, inserting markers on the map route that link to their videos’ profiles.