Elementary Classroom
Using Technology in the
More Than Just a Story
Creating amazing digital student stories is getting easier with free tech resources. Here are a couple of ideas for using tried and true tools in a new way. Enjoy!
Create a Paper Video
Yes, that’s paper – not pay per. You’ve seen examples on YouTube - Are You a 21st
Century Teacher or A Vision
of K-12 Students Today. If you break it down into several steps, this should be an easy ‘video’ to recreate:
1. Select a topic. 2. Set up groups of kids to brainstorm topic facts and arrange in a logical sequence or storyboard.
3. Print individual facts. Enlarge font to fill a landscape page or two (two pages can be taped together for longer facts).
4. Take a digital picture of students holding up fact pages. For students who do not have permission to post their pictures on the Internet, take a picture of them holding the page in front of their face so they can still be part of the project, but still abide by their parents’ wishes.
5. Upload the images to Animoto
http://animoto.com/education or Flixtime
http://flixtime.com (create a classroom Flixtime account so all ‘stories’ are in one place).
6. Check the sequence of images – are they in the correct order? 7. Add a title text slide and an ending ‘Created by…’ text slide. 8. Select appropriate music (a small group of students can be in charge of this – stress appropriate!).
9. Hit the Create button and you have your own ‘paper video’ that can be embedded, downloaded, and/or shared via your
class web site.
Suggestions for paper video topics: Science facts, a biography, Internet Safety Rules, poetry
Map Stories
A new use for those mapping web sites that are so plentiful. My fav is Community Walk (based on Google Maps) at
http://www.communitywalk.com. This idea is good for stories that have a sequence of locations.
1. Select a topic. 2. As a class, create a storyboard that shows a series of locations. 3. Student groups can choose one location to research. They’ll need to write an informational paragraph about their particular setting.
4. Groups can also locate an appropriate image or short video to illustrate the event, history, fact or part of a story. Watch copyright at this point!
5. Create a class account. Student groups can log in to create their own marker on the map.
6. Click Add a marker. The title could be the number of the location (so viewers will view the map in sequential order) or the name of the location. Copy & paste the text for this scene.
7. Click Add Photo to upload an image. 8. When all markers are finished, you can click Add a path to sequence the markers.
9. When finished, you can link, embed, or save to view in Google Earth. Amazing!
Suggestions for map stories: Historical journeys, Michigan or state or country research, a biography.
Marilyn Western is the 2008 MACUL Teacher of the Year, a former member of the MACUL Board of Directors, a Discovery Educator Network (DEN) scholar, and a Mt. Pleasant Public Schools 5th/6th grade computer lab teacher. Outside of the classroom, she has worked as the 1998-99 MDE Technology Using Educator on Loan, a MI Champions course designer and instructor, a technology trainer for Clare Gladwin RESD, Gratiot Isabella RESD and Bay Arenac ISD, a national presenter for the Bureau of Education & Research, and a district Tech Guru. She can be reached via
mwestern@edzone.net.
MACULJOURNAL | Conference 2011 | 13
By Marilyn Western
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