The Making of a Story in Kindergarten and Amplification Thoughts

Kindergarten time is storytelling time: Listening to stories, telling stories, acting stories out, learning how to read your own stories and creating your own stories!

Learning about a holiday, like Thanksgiving in the USA, is the perfect time to cloak the historical origin into a fascinating story for five and six year olds. Who is not excited about a story with Indians, interesting people named “Pilgrims”, a ship named Mayflower and a huge feast with “yummy” food? (Can you tell I am in the “little people” mode)

Our Kindergarten teacher upgraded a traditionally created paper bound class booklet of the students illustrations and text of a Thanksgiving story to creating a TechnoTale. What is a techno-tale? A techno-tale is a digitally told story

By creating a movie, the teacher AMPLIFIED

• the original reach her students’ work had
  …by embedding the video on the classroom blog, allowing family and friends to watch the movie, regardless of their geographic location and the amount of physical booklets that were available.
• the learning style
  …by allowing students to learn through and express themselves in a variety of forms.
• using different communication media
  …by giving students the opportunity,  not only draw illustrations and add text, but by recording their voices over the illustrations.
• home-school connection
  …by allowing students to share something created in the classroom with their families at home, opening doors to further conversation about school and classroom happenings.
• repetition
  …The video is personalized (student’s voice, student’s illustrations) and motivates students to watch over and over again.
• dissemination
  …by using different strategies, we actively and strategically share and disseminate our students’ work. We blog, tweet, promote and talk about their work  with others.

If interested, take a look at my How-To Guide of How to Create a TechnoTale in iMovie

In addition to the TechnoTale video you see above,  the Kindergarten class also created a bilingual iPad eBook (Hebrew/English) of their book ( with the BookCreator iPad app)

By creating an eBook version, we further AMPLIFIED the original paper booklet and technotale movie by:

• adding language tracks
  …by adding a second voice recording in the target language.
• classroom learning time
  …by giving students the opportunity to read and practice the target language (Hebrew) beyond the contact time in the classroom.
• parent-school connection
  …parents or grandparents, who are native target language speakers are included and encouraged to read the eBook with their children.
• accessibility
  ….by making the eBook available to download on the classroom blog, we allowed more family and friends to read and listen to the story.
• distribution
  …duplication of the book does not cost anything extra, distribution is easy and instant.
• reach a global audience
  …by making the file available for download and sharing the created eBook freely, we are encouraging a greater world wide audience for our students.
• students’ legacy (definition of legacy: Something handed down from an ancestor or a predecessor or from the past)
  …by creating an eBook, which is saved in the school’s  iTunes account and available on all school iPad iBook shelves for years to come, students in subsequent years, can read, listen and learn from this year’s Kindergarten class.

If you own an iPad or iPhone, you can download the ePub file  and directly drop it into your iTunes library. Once you sync your device with iTunes, you are able to read our ebook.

If you are reading this post on your iPad or iPhone, simply click on the ePub file and choose to open in iBook.

The above can give you a pretty good idea of the amplification possibilities,  a “traditional” analog project, “upgraded” to a digital version can bring. I do want to close, not with more transformative skills or goals for further amplification, but with the LEARNING behind the scenes that went into the production of the TechnoTale and eBook. Take a look…

K-Thanksgiving-technotale from langwitches on Vimeo.

Learning About Communities…Not From Textbooks

I recently wrote about Thinking About Learning Differently- Talking to Strangers, where I mentioned our third graders journey of skyping around the world to learn about different communities.

They have spoken via Skype with classes from a suburb of Los Angeles, CA , an rural community in Missouri and a city, Weatherford, TX. The latest connection was with Anna Faridaku, a teacher and children’s book author from Indonesia.  Students took turns speaking with Anna, who was just amazing in connecting (via the screen) to the kids, answering and asking questions. She engaged them  and pushed them to deeper thinking about similarities and differences about our communities.

They have now also spoken to a class from Prague, Czech Republic and we are working on our next connections with Argentina and New Zealand. Please contact me via Twitter (@langwitches), if you are interested in being part of the 3rd grade learning journey.

The goal is not to only collect cold data, but to:

• make connections between the different locations and communities
• learn about geography
• talk “to strangers”, practicing speaking skills and conversation skills, be aware of body language…
• reflect on how and what we are learning
• invite a global audience (including parents and grandparents) to continue a conversation via the classroom blog
• continuously  becoming better at asking questions and learning that questions don’t stop at the end of a lesson, day, Skype call

Overcoming geographic boundaries

Conversations about Alligators in Florida and Prague

Two native Hebrew speakers meet across the Ocean

Documenting through various lenses

Documenting

Using tools for synchronous and asynchronous collaboration

Formulating questions and collecting data

The comments on the classroom blog below came from family and friends of our students who continued to contribute to students learning after the call ended.

Family continues a conversation after the call ended

Skyping with Indonesia

It is time to THINK DIFFERENTLY about learning!

Thinking Differently About Learning: Next Steps Checklist

As I am wrapping my mind around the whole concept of “Learning How to Learn“, I am also thinking about the infrastructure of the school landscape that needs to be in place to make learning in new forms possible. Steve Hargadon, with his “You First- You be the lead learner”call for action, Will Richardson’s 3 Starting Points for Thinking Differently About Learning and Alec Couros’ slidedeck Taking on the Challenge of 21st Century Teaching and Learning are the core of my “Thinking Differently About Learning- Next Steps” Checklist

Once a school landscape/infrastructure/platforms and [educator's] Learning “You First” are in place, new forms of student learning will happen organically.

I understand that changing a school culture, starting to think differently about learning and education is very complex. It often seems an insurmountable task to fight for these changes to occur. With every step, there are many variables to consider and new obstacles to overcome. A one-page checklist seems too simplistic… but it is a starting place… and might make the initial task clearer.

The checklist below is by no means exclusive nor “how it HAS to happen”, but just my thoughts of (hopefully) helpful steps to get a conversation going at your school or your classroom, an idea of how to begin or possible next steps to continue.

Please add comments with a step, that seems to be indispensable in your infrastructure, Learning “You First” or Student Learning section.

You Can Also download the checklist as a pdf file.