I’ve planned a digital photo story unit, and I’m looking forward to my students creating stories that will blow mine way (and I know this will happen without a doubt!). I’ve already been talking about this unit in class because I wanted the students to have some sort of a heads up about since it is quite different than anything we’ve done in class before. So far, my students have expressed appreciation at the fact that I’m willing to try out something new and fun—we’ll see how they feel when they’re shaking their fist at their computer screen at 2:00 a.m.
The first day of this unit will be spent introducing the students to Photo Story and what the goals of the unit are. One of the main goals for this day is to introduce my students to the digital story resource page that I have posted on our wiki. This page contains a link to where students can download the Photo Story software, so if they do want to work at it at home they don’t have the extra worry of locating the software. I’ve also posted a video that is demonstration of how to create a story, and I am going to show this in class—it’s about six minutes and covers almost all of the necessary steps. This wiki page also has a copy of Studio D’s quick start guide, which I also intend on handing out, but it’s always nice to have a back up location. The rest of this first day will be spent letting the students play around with the program. Photo Story is the kind of program that one can learn just by playing around with. By the end of the period they should feel confident of how to at least get started on this project.
The next step of this unit is the first exploration activity. Students will write a proposal of what they want to focus their story on. They will draw some seed out of one of our prior units, and they will look to find the story that they want to tell using images, sound, and movement that they weren’t able to do in the other units. In this proposal, they will write about what kind of story they intend on telling, including which units they are drawing from. On this day I will also show two examples of photo stories, so the students can get an idea of what kind of things other students have done with an assignment like this. (The examples are from a few of Heidi’s students.) We will also discuss exploration two: a storyboard of their story. I will direct the students to the digital story resource wiki page where there are two kinds of storyboards that they can use. I borrowed/stole/appropriated this idea from Heidi, but it feels like an activity that I would do—we did a comic strip activity earlier in the semester that seems to be the cousin of this storyboard activity. I found two storyboards and posted them on the wiki for the students to use, and I also gave them to Heidi (a little reciprocation couldn’t hurt, right?). I really like these storyboards because they allow the students to visually see and plan each frame of their stories, including transitions, voice overs, and sound. It was super helpful when I made my story!
Once students turn in their storyboards, the next two days of this unit will be working days. For students who feel they need a little more professional assistance than I may be able to offer, I’m going to allow a few students each day to go to Studio D. (I also have a link to Studio D’s website from my wiki, so students know where to go when they’re on their own.)
One difficulty I ran into when planning this unit is that Thanksgiving break runs into the middle of it. I hope that this will work to my advantage—and theirs. I’m requiring that the students bring a full draft of their story to class the day that we return from break. They are going to get in groups of three and review each other’s stories. I think this will help students catch any glitches that aren’t working quite right in their stories, and then they would have a little more time to work on them before they were due. This activity is taking the place of our regular response workshops that we do.
My original goal was to have all of the students upload their stories to Youtube or Google Videos, and to link them to our wiki. I want to make sure that I am able to do this before I require them to do it! I’ve included videos of how to upload videos to both of these sites on our wiki, but there still seems to be some glitch that I haven’t quite figured out just yet. If I can’t manage to work this out, I’m just going to have the students turn in their stories on discs.
The culminating activity for this unit is the presentation of the story. Each student will present their story to the class—and so will I. I think one of the most important things that one can do in a composition class is to share, whether it be traditional writing or not. My students did one other presentation this semester, and I was really planning for that to be a warm up to this activity. As part of their presentation, students will have to explain a few of the rhetorical choices they made in the creation of their story.
I think it was a great exercise for me to create a photo story of my own—that way I can relate to the bumps in the road that they might come across. This also works to support my own theory of teaching: never ask a student to do something you haven’t done. I think students respect this—I know I do.
Without further ado...
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