The summer prep-work has started!

I don't know about everyone else, but I know when summer is really here for me because I start analyzing what I will do the next year. I have already began to talk to my social studies and science teachers about what I can do with them. My sixth grade social studies teacher and I are working on National History Day. Students can participate starting in 6th grade. We are flipping her curriculum so we are traveling from the present time back to Mesopotamia. Our goal is to do a National History Day in December with all 6th graders then we plan to have the best projects work into the next semester and compete.
Our focus will be finding primary sources, different types of presentations, and interviews.

I am sure we will be able to find ways to put storyboarding, movie making, and some website creation into our collaborative curriculum.

Is anyone else thinking about school in July?

Movie storyboards

Ok, for my next summer class assignment, I have to create a movie. I have created imovies with my students before and they seem to enjoy it. We have many more server problems with movies than Keynote presentations, but it is a fun way to assess knowledge.
What I am having trouble with is the storyboarding. I have decided to do three books from the ITA list so I can hopefully use it with my students, but I can't figure out what to say. I don't script my booktalks, so it is really hard for me to write a script about these books. I know I will use some military music for cues to change books (they are military type books)and I want to put a small author statement about each book in the video. I will figure it out tonight, but the reason I decided to share this is that I think this is the part that our students struggle with the most.
My child has ADHD and his councellor said once that he is going so fast that he can't slow down enough to learn like the other students. I think that is what students feel when they work with technology. They are so excited to work with the technology that they don't know how to put the information together before they start, nor do they want to. I think that is why so many projects are done in the last minute is just because the student doesn't understand where to start. I think I will throughly discuss storyboarding with my students before any projects can be started this year since I know how they feel.

Using Copyrighted materials when building your projects

I was thinking about research and using information from others and decided to share this information. For starters, you should always give credit to your sources. Easybib.com is an easy way to organize your sources and add them to the end of your project.

http://www.easybib.com

Even though you cite your source, it still doesn't mean that it is legal to use the information. If you are using an http://www.iowaaeaonline.org site, they have strict policies, but using other information can be tricky. Kenneth Crews wrote a book called Copyright Law for Librarians and Educators. My husband has contacted Mr. Crews for questions when giving copyright seminars and he gladly gave permission to use his forms to check for fair use and following copyright law.

Fair Use checklist: http://copyright.columbia.edu/copyright/fair-use/fair-use-checklist/

Copyright Quickguide: http://copyright.columbia.edu/copyright/copyright-in-general/copyright-quickguide/

I hope this information can help students and teacher librarians follow the laws and be safe when using copyrighted materials. Mr. Crews told my husband that Copyright laws are meant to be challenged and if you prove that you tried to follow the laws, you will often be in the right.

How do I share digital storytelling with my teachers and students?

I was looking for ways to sell digital storytelling to my teachers and make my 6th graders excited to use digital storytelling. I found a couple of videos from youtube. I plan on using them with my teachers and students this year.

Teachers:

A motivational video of the vision behind digital storytelling:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BU1SkaTsv78

An example of using digital storytelling in a science class:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvNtixAt4NE

An example of using digital storytelling in a social studies class:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1pjLdW_6rg

Students:

The 7 elements of digital storytelling:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nI0KNz63ubM

Home at last and thinking Digital Storytelling

I wanted to share my digital storytelling project and some thoughts for using digital storytelling in my schools.

De Kolonie- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DuVj31OZN1g%3CDe

It does have the Leawo watermark, but viewers can see that it is a good example to share with my students.

I was thinking about projects that I see in my school that could be turned into Digital storytelling. I was thinking about each grade level and at least one project that could be used with digital storytelling.

4th grade- Animal life cycles and habitats This is usually a diorama and we know that dioramas are old news.

5th grade- Trip on a tankful or two. This was presented with grafts, pictures and references to places you would visit in Iowa.

6th grade- Reader's theater Rewriting a traditional fairytale is a great way to show creativity and adding technology would excite the students.

7th grade- Culture Fair Creating a report is a requirement for our culture fair, but our district chose to get rid of the color printers, so why can't they be presented on a laptop. at each station.

8th grade- Current events Students have to present a current scientific or social event with opinions of fellow students and teachers on the impact of the topic.

If I can implement digital storytelling into these projects, I will have a collaborative connection to each grade.

Figuring out the storytelling and Curriculum

Ok, to use leawo, I found out that you have to sign up for Leawo Pro and get the free trial. The comment made in class about the watermark that will be left should have been listened to a little more. When I get home tomorrow afternoon, I should be able to upload my video to youtube.com and then be ready to share it on my blog. I am sure when using storytelling in the classroom, I will have much more success because I have had to figure out so much about sharing it.
On another note, I took a few minutes to do some of my required reading and read about curriculum and collection mapping. I am newly energized about that task that has been put on me by my district about writing my integrated curriculum using curriculum maps so I can start thinking about doing some collection mapping. I am excited to get started on my summer tasks after my little trip is over tomorrow. Although I am slightly saddened to leave Chase with my parents for several weeks so he can enjoy his summer, hopefully I can have a few of those weeks be extremely productive when it comes to curriculum.

Storytelling...

In an article, Digital Storytelling by Caralee Adams, it states that the Digital Story has to be built on the story, not pictures. What I found when I did a digital storytelling project was that my photo ideas started jumping out of my head as I wrote my story. As I started building my project, more pictures jumped into place. Digital Storytelling needs a very strong story to build the project around. Without a strong story, the presentation will fall short and the author will start relying on the pictures to present the story.
IfI could get my story to transfer to video, I would be much more proud. Any ideas? The recommended program wouldn't transfer the audio, but wanted an ATF file. I am 7 hours away from my story, so my husband is trying several other formats to see if they have audio. The other program mentioned photostory, so I might play with that one.

Vacation is just 2 days away!

Nothing like having your project done a day before it's due, I still have to turn it in :-) We finished the basement today. The kids helped and all of the books are on shelves! We put rugs in and moved some of Zoie's toys downstairs to help the clutter in her room. I am going to work tomorrow for a short time to see how many books I can get cleaned. We left books on a cart when the year ended with labels ready to attach.

I leave to take Chase to Missouri on Friday morning after driving all day to UNI on Thursday. I am taking both kids for a long weekend so my husband can have a vacation from us. It should be lots of fun, I just have reading to do while I am gone :-) If the kids survive the 8 hours in the car, I will have a great week.

The only thing worse than moving

I have decided that the only thing worse than moving is impromptu remodeling. The basement is still taking up 90% of our time as we try to put things back in order. We have way too many books and love them all. We have decided that we are going to have to weed and it is sooo much harder to weed your own books than it is to weed the books at school. Both kids have a full bookcase in their rooms, we have one in ours and even with the new built in shelving, we still have two overflowing bookcases in the basement. We started to hang things back up today and change the plug-ins, but they were causing us some problems because the switches that operate them (no built in lighting) were messing up the wiring. We hope to figure it out tomorrow.

I have to get the house straightened up over the next three days, get all my homework done for the next two weeks and make sure there is food in the freezer for my husband before class on Wednesday. Friday morning, as early as humanly possible, the kids and I are heading for Missouri. I will be one kid short and he needs to run. We let him go off his ADHD medicine today and he has really drove us nuts! Thank God he is going to Grandma's and Grandpa's for a month. It will be a nice little get away for all of us.