Technology in Learning

“The Collaborative ABC Project: Using Technology To Tell Stories”

By Kevin Hodgson, technology liaison with the Western Massachusetts Writing Project and Bonnie Kaplan Co-Director and Technology Liaison with the Hudson Valley Writing Project

In this presentation, Kevin Hodgson and Bonnie Kaplan detail their digital storytelling project using collaborative medium.  Bonnie gives a brief digital story overview of how this project started.  Kevin and Bonnie met at a technology institute where they were introduced to a host of Web2.0 tools.  After this, Bonnie created a blog and soon found Kevin’s blog and added it as a favorite and to her surprise, he was reading hers. In their online discussions that followed, Kevin suggested they create and share digital stories on the Web and use as many tools as possible.  Thus the project began.

Basically, they sent out an invitation to their tech network, 12 teachers across the country.  In order to give it some structure, they decided to get create a digital ABC storybook.  Each person was given several letters.  They created a short (no more than 2 minute) digital story about each letter.  The story reflects the author as a person, writer, or teacher.  Each story begins announcing the letter and end with the same announcement.  They used any software wanted to create their digital story.  Each person uploaded their final digital stories to JumpCut so the stories could be edited and combined into one ABC movie.

The presentation not only provides the background and ABC movie videos, but also provides the link to the slideshow (using Spresent) Kevin put together to document the steps and concept map (using Gliffy) they created to assign letters.  They give the link to their blog and a Google map to illustrate where each participant lived.  They also give you a chance to participate by adding a VoiceThread to record narrative for letters.

As I was watching the video, I had a new idea for using digital storytelling to review for the SOL tests.  Each student or group of students could be given a topic.  They would take the topic and create a digital storybook for their classmates which would serve as a review.  This could be a long term project that they can work on collaboratively using Web2.0 tools.  When SOL review time rolls around, the movies will be shared in class and linked in the teacher’s course for review at home.  Most students would much rather watch movies for review than do online sample tests.