Sharing Stories: Powerful Lessons in Digital Storytelling

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From the Cool Sites Series 

“It’s like everyone tells a story about themselves inside their own head. That story makes you what you are. We build ourselves out of that story.” – Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

This week I am in beautiful Atlanta, Georgia, presenting at the GAETC conference. It is one of the most organized and interesting conferences I’ve been to and they’ve had some incredible presenters/keynotes.
I had six sessions which you can read about here, https://hx7.c5f.myftpupload.com/tag/gaetc13. Here are the resources for the Digital Storytelling session in case you missed it. At GAETC, I tried collaborative note-taking with the 400 audience. We all took notes on one Google Doc. Scary, I know! However, it ended up being a great experience and many helped create notes and stories. Check out the document here, http://bit.ly/story1234. Thank you to Hannah Hussain @MeetMrsHussain, Sarabeth Holbert, Javaye Stubbs, Christen Brown, Charles Garrett @iCharlesTweets, Allison Brown, Jessica Bowen @jesslynnbowen, Darien Carruth, Melissa Turnipseed, Robin Thompson @crazymrst, Jennifer Cannon, Ashley Polito, Tracy Wilson, Tessie Robinson @tessie629, Amy Berra @superswiz, Carmen Williams, @BethuneES_APA, Pam, Bob @edubowman, and others who helped with the collaborative note-taking experience.

The Slides

Download the slides here.

My Favorite Resources

  • Make Beliefs Comix– Two, three and four panel comics that you can create in multiple languages. 350+ free printables for teachers
  • Rreadwritethink.org– 100+ free interactives and quality lesson plans integrating technology and literacy.
  • Kerpoof– create videos, comics, and more with this free tool
  • Buncee– free iPod/iPad app that creates interactive posters and comics with a library of stickers, backgrounds, audio, images, and video. Super easy to use and embeds.
  • Favorite writing prompt sites aligned with the common core are John Spencer’sPhotoprompts and Luke Neff’s Image Writing Prompts.
  • Comics Head– IOS and Android app to make comics. Best one in my opinion that allows adding your own images along with their library of characters, backdrops, and more.
  • The Digital Storytelling Course Wiki – I helped organize and run this open online 5 week session for the last 2 years. You can check out the resources curated by over 500 teachers worldwide. We cover creative common music and images, comics, video, storybooks, and more!
  • Kathy Schrock’s Rubrics
  • My Digital Storytelling Symbaloos– Find a free tool or app for any digital storytelling project.

More Incredible Tools

Creaza– One of my favorite sites where you can create comics, make movies, edit audio, and more! Embed in a blog or wiki.
GoAnimate– Choose from various characters, type in the dialogue, choose your background scene, and create a free fun movie.
DVolver– Choose from various characters, type in the dialogue, choose your background scene, and create a free fun movie.
ZimmerTwins– Choose from various characters, type in the dialogue, choose your background scene, and create a free fun movie.
PicLits– Drag and drop words unto a beautiful image.
Bubblr– create your comic strip with Flickr pictures and add bubbles to tell your story!
Comicmaster – Cool graphic novel creator.
Comic Strip Generator – You can upload photos or use web images in addition to their library of ready-to-use images
ToonDoo – the site allows students to share their comics, comment on other comics, and even save and edit a copy of a comic
OneTrueMedia – Mix your photos and pictures with text and animations.
Blabberize – Make your pictures talk
Smilebox – Create videos from your pictures and videos adding design and music. You download this software to your computer.
Glogster – Create and online poster with your videos.
VoiceThread for Educators-Interactive way to present stories and have parents and other students comment on the stories. Several options. Embed in a blog or wiki.
Storybird-Students create beautiful stories by choosing beautiful art and adding the words. Embed in a blog or wiki.
Voxopop – Construct audio stories.
5cardflicker – Tell your stories through flicker photos.
Zooburst – 3D pop up story creator.
Scholastic story starter – Start your story randomly.
Thestorystarter – Start your story randomly.
LittleBirdTales – Upload your picture, record your voice to tell your stories.
Animoto– Upload up images, choose a soundtrack from the library, many nice holiday tunes to choose from, and click a button to make a free short video online and on your mobile device.

Creative Commons Music and Images

Musicshake – Create copyright free music for your video.
Compfight – Search Flickr photos for your videos.
MorgueFile – Find free pictures for your videos.
Free Music Archive, and Jamendo, and Royalty Free Music are all great places for free creative commons music!
SoundBible – FreeSound – Free sound effects.

Digital Storytelling Apps and Tools


Find all these apps and bookmarks in this Pearl Tree, http://pear.ly/bx2tb! It’s a free mindmap of links. You click a pearl and it’ll expand into the resource. Works on mobile devices.
Digital storytelling in Integrating the Web / Shelly Sanchez Terrell (shellyterrell)
Organize your interests with the Pearltrees’ app for Android

Challenge:

Use one of these resources or ideas and share with me how the experience went with your learners.

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