Digital Storytelling

This week we learned about digital storytelling. I chose to create a digital story as an example of something I, as a teacher, could possibly show my students to introduce them to a unit on conserving natural resources or the rainforest. I actually had a very hard time creating this presentation using VoiceThread. I also encountered problems with the doodle feature throughout the presentation ( I do not know why it makes circles on some slides and not others.) I also would like it better if I could play some music along with the sideshow of pictures, but couldn't find out how/ if I could do that using VoiceThread. I think maybe if I played around with it more, I could maybe get more used to the features and create a better digital story next time.

Although I can see the valuable uses of using this technology in the classroom, I have found that it takes a much longer time creating than I had anticipated, so I would probably not use this as much in my teaching as I would other technologies because of the amount of time it takes outside to prepare it. Because of this too, I think this would be a good unit project for students to work on together throughout a couple week period. I think digital storytelling can be a great teaching tool for teachers to use when there is a substitute teacher, because the teacher can create a lesson using her voice, which makes it seem like she is there. Students can post comments or questions they might have right in the presentation, so the teacher will know what she needs to address when she returns. It is also good to use to help cater to all students. Digital storytelling helps cater to the visual learners in the classroom.