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Hi Tony and Sarah,

These are the digital story resources I located. Most are K-2 as I teach first and second grades. Enjoy! Aron

http://www.etheoreal.com/jlearn2.0/category/hebrew-language/

http://voicethread.com/

1. The above link connects to the only digital storytelling I found on teaching Hebrew. Students from the Maaganim School have their voices recorded on a Voice thread program that enables the listener to access the voices of participants in response to the question introduced by the teacher. This particular voice thread contains Hebrew and English, but it is clearly a practice tool for the Israeli children to practice their English speaking skills. The quality control on the children’s contributions was lax. Some kids were not taking it seriously and the recording quality was inconsistent. But you can see the potential of voice thread as a tool. I could see creating a voice thread like this where the children can access Hebrew oral language skills they are learning on the classroom, and can practice at home, and show their parents.

I found all of the following digital stories on the following link: http://teachers.santee.k12.ca.us/hammack/digital%20storytelling.htm

http://teachers.santee.k12.ca.us/hammack/videos/igneousjjj.MOV

2. Here is one of the interesting, effective, and amazingly concise digital stories that I found. The presentation is only about 28 seconds long. It is titled “Forming Igneous Rock.” The age of the children is not known, but they appear to be fourth or fifth graders. The students used an interesting and creative combination of animation, voice, music, and art to explain how igneous rock is formed. They cleverly created an animation in which a piece of red clay (representing the lava) appear to be rolling down a mountain (that is illustrated with color pencil.) The students clearly had fun with this project. The background music track is an instrumental bluegrass version of Stephen Foster’s class folk tune, Camp Town Races. The music gives the presentation an earthy and humorous twist. I would have my students credit the music, which they did not do. Other than that, this is a fine example of using digital storytelling techniques to illustrate a science concept.

http://teachers.santee.k12.ca.us/hammack/videos/scarecrow_full.MOV

3. Scarecrow book: This looks like a first grade or kindergarten class did it. Each child displays the scarecrow they created in art class, telling its name and something about it. The teacher recorded children individually and combined them all to make a digital class book. In the background is soft guitar music, adding warmth to the presentation. The idea is simple and could be used in my classroom for the purpose of teaching Hebrew concepts. For example, a child could be photographed showing a picture of a parent, and then say a few Hebrew sentences about that parent. It would be easy to construct a digital “book” that could be shared with family members.

http://teachers.santee.k12.ca.us/hammack/videos/Buck%20Stidham.mov

4. This digital story seems to have been created by a teacher about her father, Buck Stidman. This is a wonderful tribute to a father by a loving daughter. It tell the life story of an man who was a patriot, an awarded soldier in World War Two, a teacher, and a devoted father. This is the type of presentation that can be used to inspire students to write their own digital stories about a family member. The story included turn of the century photographs, narration, and bluegrass music. Since I am contemplating making a digital story of my dad, I am very interested to see how others have tackled doing such a personal assignment. This is a wonderful tribute of a man who exhibits all the best of “old school” values. This is the type of man who built up the foundation of our country.

http://teachers.santee.k12.ca.us/meyer/videos/ABC%20book.mov

5. This is a first grade class that made a class digital book about the alphabet. Each student follows the same format of saying their name, their best friends name, where they live, and what they do. Each bit of information is a name, place, and noun that start with the letter they are choosing to represent. Each child contributes a picture to illustrate the concept they present. The children say their lines in a rhythmic fashion, which was clearly part of the assignment to add the “fun factor.” In the background is soft and soothing piano music. I could definitely apply this concept of a digital story by creating a similar book in Hebrew.

SARAH'S PART:

[] This site contains several digital stories for high school Language Arts. The first one is an introduction to the Harper Lee novel, __To Kill a Mockingbird__. It is a teacher-made introduction to the novel, and explains how it was one of the great 1960s novels, won a Pulitzer Prize, yet in the 21st century, the book was banned in one school district while an entire city (Chicago) adopted it as its “one book” for a year at the very same time. The digital “story” asks, among other things, what is controversial about this novel? What is the difference between censoring a book and banning it?

[] This is a website that hosts a digital storytelling contest. Much of the content is animated. I was thinking it could be an enrichment activity for gifted high school students, or an independent study for an Art elective. There are many to view, including the 2007 winner and 2008 winner, the People’s Choice winners, etc. I know many high school students who are interested in animation and anime, and thought this might motivate them to hone their digital storytelling skills. Projects like these have the potential to integrate many different subjects. . ..

[] Elementary school-age students in Ghana created these digital stories, so they are simple. They resemble traditional books, except they are online. However, they are useful because students can see these are authentic works of fiction and nonfiction. And though they are simple, they are a starting point. Then you can add audio later, in addition to more pages. ..


 * TONY'S PART:**

[]

This story is about a Hispanic high school age boy and his neighborhood. It consists of text, sound, and video. His mother explains her occupation (housekeeper), and he shows the viewer parts of his barrio (run-down neighborhood), a place where there was a drive-by shooting nearby, and himself explaining how he hopes to get a good job and get out of there.

Well, the whole video just breaks your heart, as you can imagine. I remember thinking "Wow, this kid has a camera and computer to make the digital story, but look where he lives!" It's interesting that much of the dialogue is from the interview with his mother, not as much from the student shooting it. Regardless, it makes you want to do something to help the kids in the barrios.

[]

This digital story is a heart-wrenching tale of a high school student’s ancestry. She uses something similar to MovieMaker to tell the story of her family from her great-great-grandparents down to the birth of herself and her little brother. There is video of the girl, but most of the presentation consists of old photographs, text, and background music.

This digital story tugs the heart strings as well, but for a different reason. It is almost a Cinderella story, where you know this girl (coming from all these descendents with hard lives) turns out well living in the United States. It's also always so nice for me anyway, to see kids looking back at where they came from. That's so rare today.

[]

The site sfett.com was a great place for me to find high school student-created digital stories. Since David Jakes mentioned that these stories could be funny, I decided to include this one. It’s a humorous documentary on beans that fuses video with sound and images. There are spoofs on Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bill Nye The Science Guy, and //Forrest Gump//’s Bubba. Yet it’s a very smartly created production with really good information, like a science project online.

My response to this initially was laughter, as is the point. But as I watched it I realized, "Wow, this is ambitious and really informative." It's admirable because making funny video without "corniness" is really tough.