An Introduction to Digital CompositionsThe Gateway Writing ProjectGary Ryan |
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| The Gateway Writing Project expects our participants will have a wide variety of experience and skills. Our intention is to coach teachers through the writing process of creating digital stories and compositions—from prewriting, writing, to presentation/publishing. We are offeingr suggestions, both technical and pedagogical, on how to use digital compositions to enhance what teachers are already doing with composition in the classroom. | |
| Main Link: Digital Storytelling Cookbook: How to from the Center for Digital Storytelling | |
| The Gateway Writing Project | The GWP Ning | The National Writing Project |
Overview
of the Sessions |
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| 1. | Our Stories: An Overview of the Power of Digital Storytelling |
Gary Ryan GWP Technology and Academic Liaison ryang@cbchs.org |
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| 2. | Basic Elements |
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| 3. | Choosing the Right Media |
Premier, Movie Maker, PowerPoint |
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| 4. | Prewriting |
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| 5. | Writing |
A. Scaffolding writing activities that move students from script to presentation
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| 6. | Digital Compositions and Education |
Assessment, Publishing, Inquiry based projects |
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| 7. | Follow up Tech Wednesdays throughout the school year. |
| Research, Reading, Collaboration and Mentoring | |
| Gary Ryan's Homepage | |
| Gary Ryan's Writing in the Digital Age Course | |
| Gary Ryan's American Studies Home Page | |
| Gary Ryan's Presentation on Digitial Compositions | |
| Visit Gary's Tahoe Trip for the Resource Development Retreat | |
| Joe’s Google Site for the RDR Participants | |
| Are You in Tahoe? | |
| Retreat Flickr Account | |
| Google Apps for Education: | |
| What About Us? | |
| The Gateway Writing Project Ning | |
Thee Basics |
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| Equipment | |
| • Access to personal computers with Windows XP
operating system (and therefore, MovieMaker software) • Digital cameras • Access to the World Wide Web • Microphones • Computer Video Projector (for presenting final projects) • DVD burner (for creating movies to take home) • Software for streaming video through Web (i.e, Quicktime) -- if you consider publishing your movies on a school website (otherwise, not really necessary) • Scanner |
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| Web Sites that Allow Legal Access to Images, Music, etc… | |
| • Creative Commons is this site provides links to a host of sites and organizations that
have agreed to some leniency of copyright protection. • Discovery School is this site is geared towards educators and students, with free material that is intended to be used for school projects. • The Free Site is this site is loaded with free web-based things, and this link connects you to their clip art index. • Free Kids Music -- this site has children's music available from artists who have agreed to share their work for free for children and educators. |
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| Students and Publication | |
| Student Presentations and Copyrights | |
Teaching Tips |
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Seven Ideas: Two Assumptions |
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| 1. | Storytelling is an age-old way of transferring knowledge—instructional, persuasive, historical, or reflective. |
| 2. | Digital storytelling involves combining narrative with digital content to create a short movie. |
| 3. | The resources available to incorporate into a digital story are virtually limitless, giving the storyteller enormous creative latitude. |
| 4. | However, no media is good for everything; each has costs and benefits in terms of what skills each develops. |
| 5. | Reading develops imagination, induction, reflection and critical thinking. |
| 6 | The relationship between word and image is becoming increasingly unstable, and the nexus of control is the way in which text gathers around the image and supervises its reading (See Jay David Bolter). |
| 7. | Students spending much more time with visual media, their critical thinking skills suffer, yet their visual intelligence is actually rising. |
Two Assumptions |
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| Assumption Number One | |
| "As students spend more time with visual media and less time
with print, evaluation methods that include visual media will give
a better picture of what they actually know." --Patricia Greenfield, UCLA distinguished professor of psychology and director of the Children's Digital Media Center, Los Angeles. |
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| Assumption Number Two | |
| Make sure your course design focuses on critical thinking, collaboration and revision and includes a balanced diet of media in order to develop visual intelligence and social intelligence. | |
Recommendations: (with a
tip of the hat to Clifford Lee) |
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| 1. | Scaffold the writing process in clearly defined, separate pieces, with the ultimate goal of creating the text, image, sound and voiceover narrative. |
| 2. | Include an authentic demonstration of their work in some type of exhibition, so that students are motivated to complete the project for mastery, rather than completion – AND it gives the students a sense of purpose for their writing. |
| 3. | Scaffold EVERY aspect of the digital story project: • Show models of strong storytelling techniques and analyze those together. • Do a workshop with the incorporation of the "right" type of music that serves to complement your story. • Play student-made and adult-made digital stories as models to critically analyze and evaluate prior to their assembly. • Have students go through peer-edits in the writing AND reading of their voiceover narrative. |
| 4. | Push students to be more meta-cognitive about their inclusion of visual and audio clips, making sure that the visual does dominate the text; emphasize and model critical thinking skills at every step in the process. |
| 5. | Teach students the importance of word choice, and when to use the image or sound to carry the narrative argument, through workshops and models, to emphasize how to make an important point with fewer words. |
| 6. | Create a community of learners who are comfortable with collaboration and socializing the process of composing and revising. |
| 7, | Understand that assessment is going to be complex and rewarding. |
Personal Learning Communities |
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| The Gateway Writing Project Ning | |
| The English Companion Ning | |
| English
Teachers Find an Online Friend: the English Companion By Grant Faulkner |
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| Summary: The English Companion Ning brings English teachers a professional community that they sometimes lack in their schools. Teachers discuss books, lesson plans, and a panoply of classroom topics via discussion forums, blog posts, and multimedia. | |
| NWP Nings | |
| Tech where nwp teckies meet and greet | |
| NWP Book Group Networkwhere nwp book groupies meet and greet | |
| NWP Site Leaderswhere nwp site leaders meet and gree | |
| MWPWiki Technology "How To" Tutorials | |
| NWP Featured Technology Resources | |
| Red Clay Annotated Bibliography | |
| Apple Learning Interchange | |
| This is a place where Educator created lessons and activities, Meet Others in this unique social network, and collaborate online using Web 2.0 tools to engage with others. | |
| From MacLearning: Apple Learning Interchange is a Social Network | |
| Second Life for Educators | |
| Bud the Teacher: This is a blog by a National Writing Project teacher that I met two summers ago. Great guy; great ming | |
Research suggests that a digital reading and writing environment can positively influence literacy. Multimedia Composing presents a means of self-expression and provides support for development of reading and writing skills. Dynamic multimedia presentations allow students to feel their work could have a greater voice, which in turn encourages them to put more effort into it…
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