Digital Storytelling and Ebooks

I introduced my students to digital storytelling last week with http://www.storylineonline.com/. It is a website where members of the Screen Actor's Guild read a book. The actors introduce, read, and show the pictures to the students. The students are introduced to books we may not have in the media center, but are able to get at the public library. I also had shown Fifth grade how to create their own digital story with photos from their visit to STARLAB at Dobbins Air Force Base. The Fifth graders then wanted to use Photostory to create projects for the end of the year. They took pictures of their favorite teachers, classrooms, friends, and other places at school. The students then out the pictures in the order of importance to them. We then added music to them Because the music was already included, we were able to stay within copyright laws. Once they completed the project, we saved it to a CD and the students were able to show their parents at the end of the year.

While we do not have E-books at our school, persay, we do have online research resources. We have encyclopedias, websites, and other online resources for our students. The county has started introducing ebooks to the high schools with the hope of sending it to middile schools and elementary schools. They will be beneficial to the students who want to read a book but the hard copy is checked out. The checkout time for an ebook is usually twenty-four hours where the students are able to read the books and then returning them for someone else to read. With the introduction of e-books into the media centers, the students will be able to read their favorite books when they want without having to wait on it to be returned.