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rence, who was completing her practicum at Garden City Middle School and eager to play with digital sto- rytelling.

My work with Mary and her seventh and eighth grade students afforded me an opportunity to explore new technology, participate in its integration into the math and social studies curricula, and gather some new ideas to implement when I re- turned to my own library me- dia center at The Roeper School where I currently work with preschool through fifth grade students.

to explore so that they may share “a day in the life” of a child from that country. Gathering in- formation from the CultureGrams database and World Book Online, images from Creative Com- mons, and copyright-friendly music, the stu- dents used Windows Movie Maker to create an informative multimedia global journey.

“When two particular students finished their digital stories, they keenly took turns watching each other’s work and marveled at their new skills.”

With each class working on a digital storytelling proj- ect, there were two constants I observed among the students: focus and enthusiasm. They were connect- ing with the content and technology in a manner that kept them engaged and actively learning. The stu- dents were intent on understanding the process and, ultimately, creating digital stories that presented their new knowledge and important skills.

As I circulated the computer lab to assist students, I overheard exchanges between the students that indi- cated their excitement. When two particular students finished their digital stories, they keenly took turns watching each other’s work and marveled at their new skills. It also became apparent that this technology project served as a vehicle to motivate reluctant stu- dents to develop essential writing and speaking skills while they prepared their scripts to record in Audacity. All students had the opportunity to individualize their projects and infuse creativity in selecting photographs and music, and drawing images for their movie.

In implementing digital storytelling projects at Ro- eper, I found that this type of technology integration enhanced certain lessons and activities at the elemen- tary level as well. Students in a French class, who typically study a French-speaking country outside of France, used similar storyboarding techniques to cre- ate tourism movies for Madagascar. Exclamations of “Visite Madagascar!” resounded through the com- puter lab as students recorded their podcasts from bilingual scripts. Instead of a typical country report and poster, the students found creative ways to share country facts and information that would entice visi- tors to explore Madagascar. Fourth and fifth graders in an anthropology elective who are learning about children’s lives around the world, selected a country

www.mimame.org

Some important lessons we learned working on these projects:

• Always have students make a source folder. Ev- erything for the project

should be saved in the folder.

• Students should use a graphic organizer to map out their project before they begin to use the technology. This organizer should be re- viewed and approved by the content teacher.

• Encourage students to be creative but use a rubric so students understand expectations.

• A checklist on the white board kept visible to students may encourage them to become more self-directed with a multistep project requiring numerous software components.

Reflecting with the classroom teachers, all agree that these projects help them achieve their learn- ing objectives in new and meaningful ways. As library media specialists, we remain enthusias- tic about the opportunities provided by digital storytelling for integrating the AASL Standards for the 21st Century Learner.

Mary Morrison is the Library Media Specialist at Garden City Middle School in Garden City, MI.

Elisabeth Lawrence is an MLIS student at

Wayne State University, and she also teaches at Roeper School in Birmingham, MI

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