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Digital Storytelling

As a second grade teacher, I have used digital storytelling in my classroom multiple times

throughout my teaching career. Digital storytelling are “hands-on, project-based activities that

engage students with content often framed as responses to academic questions, persuasive

arguments for relevant issues, or expositions of personal creativity” (Winslow et al.,2017, p.383).

In my opinion, the only limitation there is to using digital storytelling is in regards to the age level

of the students. As a second grade teacher, I have to make sure to use a digital storytelling site/app

that is not complex or hard to navigate for my students. One site that I have used multiple times in

my classroom for digital storytelling is Storyboardthat. When I first introduce this digital

storytelling platform, I normally have my students create a personal storyboardthat. I will ask them

create a writing piece first telling me about a personal event in their life such as a summer vacation,

favorite birthday or something fun they did. Then I allow them to bring the story to life using the

website Storyboardthat. Once we have mastered how use this multimedia tool, I then take it a step

up and have them create or recreate a narrative. Last year, we all recreated our favorite event from

our book study on Charlotte’s Web. After reading about the various versions of digital storytelling,

I would like to try out the app Toontastic. It’s compatible with chromebooks, which is what all

students are given in my district. My plan is to use Toontastic to introduce persuasive writing to

my students. I would show them my finish product “toontasic” persuasive video and show them

the process to creating it such as brainstorming, rough drafts, editing, final drafts, designing and

audio. As stated in the textbook, “students must learn various essential processes that facilitate

story design and production planning and management” (Winslow et al.,2017, p.386). I realize for

second graders this is a huge project/task, so I would break these different steps up into a timeline

of when we will have them completed. Another way that I could use digital stories in my classroom
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would be to introduce our social studies unit on different types of communities. I would create a

digital story showing details of each type of community (urban, rural and suburban).
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References

Winslow, J., Dickerson, J., & Lee, C. (2017). Applied technologies for teachers. [VitalSource

Bookshelf]. Retrieved from https://online.vitalsource.com/#/books/9781524936600/