Digital Storytelling in the 5th Grade

Digital storytelling is the new, high-tech way for students to share their knowledge on a particular subject. Students are simply using technology as a means to show what they know.

My classroom is filled with critical thinkers who are intrinsically motivated to learn. They love hands on activities, and especially love when they get to use computers in the classroom. Using technology only gets them more excited about their education. If I were to use digital storytelling to enhance my curriculum I would be sure that my students would me more than trilled to take on the challenge.

One type of digital storytelling project I would like to create for my 5th graders would be on the events leading up to the American Revolution. Currently we are learning about this topic in social studies, and students have been building their portfolios of classwork on the topic. I would love to create a digital piece that could be saved onto DVDs to place in their portfolios as well.

Before telling my students that they will be creating a digital story, I would teach them what digital storytelling is, and show them examples of digital stories to engage them. This way my students will feel more comfortable with the idea of creating their own digital stories in school.

My students would have a given assignment topic, such as: Explain what caused the American Revolution. Then my students would have the freedom of choice to either share dates and events, writing samples explaining points of views from both British and colonists' view points, and any other creative works to show the growing tensions between the two sides of this revolution. I would give my students about two weeks (15 class days during social studies block) to work on completing their Digital stories.

I would give students several ideas they could use to organize their information for their digital storytelling, such as: Prezi, PowerPoint, or imovie. We would spend class time working in each of these software programs so that my students has a basic understanding of how to work within their program of choice. I would also teach them how to embed videos into their presentations if they chose to share one their made themselves, or one found online.

I would then give my students a list of resources where they could conduct research for their digital stories. Some of the resources I have in mind are the class social studies textbook, History Channel videos, and several other kid-friendly websites that give useful information on the events, people, and reasoning behind the American Revolution.

Ideally my students would create an organized presentation through a digital means to share their knowledge of the American revolution after class discussions and researching. I would expect their presentations to include appropriate, and relevant information, along with colorful images to add visual appeal to their presentations.

We would have a publishing day to share each students presentations with the class, and end with a final discussion about the commonalities between the students' digital stories to gather the most important events that led up to the American Revolution.

Digital storytelling opens up students imaginations/creativity to share their knowledge with others. Today students live in a digital world; shouldn't school help build their technology skills they will need later in life?

-Lisa Costello