Voice Thread as Digital Storytelling in L2 Learning

I think that Voice Thread is a great tool for providing a space for collaborative input and interaction in a digital storytelling task.  It involves all of the forms of communication, (reading, writing, listening, and speaking), and allows full collaboration in the class.  Being online, it can be used in, or outside of class time and the classroom setting, thus extending the time and contexts in which students can learn!

I commented on two of my classmates' Voice Threads. the first one was about learning French culture as a means to help improve communication in French.  Learning L2 Culture by Nick.  The second Voice Thread I commented on was about the uses of music in teaching L2. I found through my own experiences that music can help L2 cultural understanding more than it can aid grammatical and lexical development.

All About Digital Storytelling

Digital storytelling is the next logical step in literature. First, there was the oral traditions of Viking sagas and Greek epics, sung by bards who were society's storytellers in those days.  Few texts remain from these sources; examples being Beowulf and Homer's The Iliad and The Odyssey.  Fast forward to the introduction of the printing press in Germany, and written literature has become the easiest way to tell stories and transfer information.  Since the 1980's and 1990's, the internet has grown into the best information and technology development ever.  Now, almost every person can use the internet to find information and publish their own findings regarding any topic they choose.  And thanks to this progression of events, stories can be told using any or all of the tools available through the use of computers, voice, text, image, and music can all be combined to tell stories like Homer could have never dreamt.  With the rise of digital storytelling, we can all share our take on momentous occasions to the world. Now everyone has a voice!  "What's your story?"  -The Educational Uses of Digital Storytelling

"Digital stories can be instructional, persuasive, historical, or reflective." -7 Things You Should Know About Digital Storytelling  From this article, I have learned that digital storytelling can embody any style of traditional storytelling.  Also, the article says that anyone can do it because these tools are available to any computer and internet user.  Another point the article makes is that digital storytelling makes the internet a viable pedagogical tool for non-technical fields of study. 

The whole idea behind digital storytelling is that computers allow for a vast number of innovations to be incorporated into whatever project on which a person may be working.  Due to this freedom, the combinations for artistic invention are nearly endless.  A story can be told as a collage of images, a recorded video or an animated one, with voice, music, and sound effects, in any combination!  Rather than just text and (maybe) pictures, the story can be told just like on a TV show.  Using these computer tools to express ideas is only the leading step to the next plateau of how stories will be told by humans.

To keep people on the cutting edge, and to bring others up to speed with digital storytelling, The Center for Digital Storytelling helps by providing workshops to promote people telling their versions of things, and opening others up to worlds of which they have never even heard.


Photo by: Digistorytellin

TED Branches out into TED Ed!

I found blog post from one of the Edublogs to which I subscribe that announces the development of TED Ed. This development shows that TED, in an effort to expand its mantra into the world of education, has begun to apply the ideas that it embodies. I really feel that TED Ed is the way of the future, as far as education goes. Teachers can use any video, including their own, to create an original lesson, and track the progress of their students. This tool has already revolutionized teaching, and I believe that with the backing of TED, it will lead the way for online education for long to come.

Free Tech 4 Teachers: TED Ed

Twitter is dumb

Twitter can be useful for people staying up with the latest fashion trends, celebrity gossip, trivial knowledge, and even breaking news. Despite these awesome pros of using twitter, if you don't have a smartphone, it's pointless. The information that is posted on twitter is only relevant for people who sit and stare at their twitterfeed 24/7/365.

That being said, there is one way to cheat twitter's adhd inducing characteristics that can make it a useful tool for educators and other professionals; provided they have a smartphone... Tweets can be tracked, (as mentioned in the "28 Creative Ways Teachers are Using Twitter" article, 28 Creative Ways teachers are using Twitter) to discover trends and to see students' and other teachers' progress and findings.

Other than this, however, the rest of the article seems to suggest classroom-disrupting and distracting behaviors for the 21st century student. I hope I am not hurting anyone's feelings by taking this stance, but tweeting the answers to questions in the middle of class seems to be detrimental to the learning process. I feel that if the teacher and students are meeting in a classroom on a regular basis, it stands to reason that the students ought to be expected to raise their hands to answer a question posed. Also, God forbid a student should have to use a pen and paper to take a quiz or test.

There is one bright spot to all of this... I found in Using Twitter as an Educational Tool that Twitter is a great way for connecting students in countries around the world, and providing a place where they can discuss topics and share ideas.  The example that I thought was truly ingenious was that Twitter is the perfect online platform to tell collaborative stories, using posts from kids anywhere in the world.  Since they are limited to 140 characters, everyone has an equal say in the development of the tale.

I understand that Twitter can be helpful for someone with enough technology on-hand to look like an 80's action movie villain, but for most people, especially in the ESL field, money isn't the most plentiful thing in life, and twitter may be a bit unreasonable for the classroom. That being said, the opportunity for the exchange of new ideas and classroom activities is endless, and for a teacher making a lesson plan, or seeking help on how to reach a struggling pupil, Twitter may just provide you with some quick answers.