Oh the Wonders of the Web!

Completing the WoW project taught me a lot about myself and how I will teach with technology. My topic was Digital Storytelling for Developing 21st Century Literacy Skills. My plan for this project was to create a visually appealing project that would clearly explain what digital storytelling is and how it can be used in the classroom. As with digital storytelling, I wanted to tell a story and I needed to keep in mind that my audience consisted of educators of various grade levels. I wanted my classmates to learn something that they would actually use as teachers. The process of developing my presentation, demonstrated how much I had learned in the last few weeks of Literacy and Technology. I was able to hyperlink text and add videos and images to my presentation more effectively than I had ever had before.

My peers responded very well to my presentations when it was presented during our Webex meeting. They had a great deal of positive feedback about the content of my project and stated that they felt it was interesting and thorough. I was also very pleased with my presentation. I felt that it did a great job of explaining what digital storytelling was and it gave all of the essential information that teacher's would need in order to use this program in their classroom. I thought it was important that I provided the audience with links to different programs that could be used in order to make a digistory and that I gave them various examples of topics that they could use when assigning digistories in the future. If I was assigned to present this topic again I would like to have examples of various types of digistories that I could link to the slides. Students would also find it helpful to see examples of the work they needed to complete prior to beginning their assignment.

Digital storytelling is an excellent tool that I will definitely use in my classroom. It allows students to be creative and remain actively involved in their learning process. I think that my students would enjoy have the freedom to share their ideas with their classmates and create stories that are unique to them. Publishing their stories online makes this activity relevanta nd encourages children to have fun while learning! I cannot wait until I am able to work with digital stories in my own class one day!