My objective in doing this project was to help English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) learners become comfortable and confident with using technology, while communicating in English, the target language. My logic was that as students were doing the project, double learning would take place: in technology and in English. The primary motivation for embarking on this project was to provide an opportunity for students to communicate their stories. The secondary motivation was to help students create a very personal product that they could share with family and friends. As the project came together, people became more and more eager to share their stories, and the secondary motivation became more pressing. Had the technology been absent from the project, I think a great deal of the dynamism of sharing the projects would have been lost for the students. This was something new and original. Using the digital format as opposed to just pencil and paper made the results richer.
I chose to lay out each step very simply so that we could work at an equal pace. Students could take the time they needed to complete each step. For the most part, they worked at their own speed. Those students who progressed very quickly had alternative assignments to work on until the others caught up, or they helped the others. Students spent a great deal of time editing their narration and experimenting with how to do that in Word. Students spent roughly equal amounts of time working on their storytelling techniques and revising their stories. This project occupied several lab sessions, so each student had time to scan his/her pictures at some point during that period. The students became adept at basic computer skills because composing the digital story required that each step be repeated several times. They were therefore able to master the computer skills involved.
I’d recommend that you familiarize yourself with the technology before starting the project and/or schedule time throughout the semester to work with someone who knows how to work with sound and image files. Students can work in groups to create one story. It helps to keep narrations short and limit the number of pictures. Reading one page of narration for ten pictures is equal to about two minutes. Stories longer than two or three minutes tend to seem too lengthy. Try to work with your students in a computer classroom at least once a week for the duration of the project. Have students critique your demo story for what makes a good, interesting story so they have a model. Encourage students to create narrations that go beyond the facts of their lives and incorporate their emotions in their narration. Use audio software that allows for editing to create sound files. Require that students leave their work, saved on CD-RWs or equivalent storage medium with sufficient capacity, with you at the end of each class. If possible, create a backup file for student work on your own CD-RW or hard drive. It really helps to have a lab technician or Student Technology Mentor present at each class to assist you and the team leaders with troubleshooting.
Overall, this was a great learning experience for me as an instructor. I was confronted with organizing each lab time hour, the group leaders, working out common technical glitches and explaining to my leaders how to fix them. Of course, this experience helped me to realize that some tasks just take longer than I anticipated. Because of the strategies I developed for dealing with these issues, I will have a much easier time in future sessions. Most importantly, I confirmed my feeling that students can and will take responsibility for their own and each other’s learning.
Activity Overview
The plan below is a general one which could be used for any digital storytelling project. In my class, students developed a story describing their past lives in their country, their present situation in the U.S., and their plans for the future. Students use this story as a basis for creating a career plan in a future class.
Students were evaluated on the storytelling quality of their narration and the compatibility of the pictures, their group and individual class presentations of their project, and the clarity and accuracy of their pronunciation in their audio recordings.
To prepare for this activity:
- Secure all software necessary for the project.
- Create your own story as a demo for students.
- Get a CD-RW for each student to save work on (if necessary, format to save class time).
- Create step-by-step instructions for basic skills (opening, closing, saving files, editing in Word).
- Create mini-projects for the first three weeks that incorporate practice on basic skills.
- Create student teams and have students volunteer to be team leaders.
- Work with team leaders for 15 minutes at the beginning of each lab session to teach them what they will assist their team members with that day (how to open a file, how to save a file, etc.).
While some students are working in pairs at the scanner to scan in their picture or load their digital pictures from the camera and save them to their CD-RW, other students write the narration for their story in Word. It helps to have one or two students become the “experts” at these tasks, especially the scanning. This part of the project will probably take several classes.
I collected and responded to multiple drafts of the narrations so I could assist students with developing them into rich and meaningful stories.
When the narration and pictures are ready, students print the pictures and the narration, using them to create a storyboard, matching pictures with selected narration and deciding on the sequence. As with any piece of writing, you may have to help students think through the sequence and the order in which the story and pictures are compiled.
Students use PowerPoint to create slides for each picture, and then convert them back to *.jpg files. This is to ensure that the picture sizes are uniform. Students practice performing the narration, and when they are ready, record it using sound editing software like Sound Forge or Sound Recorder. It’s most helpful to have a lab assistant present during this process. The completed sound file should be saved. I edited the sound files, cutting out extended pauses, unintended blunders or muffled sounds.
Working in teams, the students convert pictures and sound separately using QuickTime Pro or Movie Maker. Students then work with the lab assistant or instructor to unite each picture file with its sound file to create a mini-movie file and unite all mini-movie files to create one digital story. 81
Materials and Resources
Handouts (available at: http://www.lagcc.cuny.edu/ctl/dfl/resources.htm)
- Using PowerPoint and Movie Maker for Digital Stories
- Using Quicktime Pro for Digital Stories