Community Stories
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This part of the project will involve Digital Storytelling and the use of Digital Artifacts, where students interview a partner and then retell their partner's story on this wiki site.
Students will bring in artifacts that tell some type of hidden story about their culture, family or belief system
As students create their individual blogs, they will answer the Essential Question: Who Am I? As students create their wikis they will choose a unit question to answer as they retell someone else’s story. Their choices will include:
- How can music, art and literature tell stories about someone’s life?
- Why is it important to tell others our stories?
- How can artifacts tell stories about who we are?
As a class, we will discuss and answer the other Essential Question: Can Someone Else tell my story?
Students will share their stories orally and eventually create a culminating project of their choice.
Developing Independent Learners
The ultimate goal of all instruction is to help students become as independent as possible so they can control their own learning. Technology and instruction in self-direction skills can help accomplish this.
What are Community Stories?
Everyone has stories to tell. Stories represent who we are and help bring together our real-life daily adventures, cultural diversity, and shared experiences.
In this unit students will become professional storytellers. Students will answer the questions: Can others tell my story? and Who am I?
After participating in a variety of storytelling and story building activities, students will interview a classmate and retell that classmate’s hidden story. They will learn how the Internet and Digital storytelling allows a writer to experience the power of personal expression. Using pictures and a variety of family artifacts, they will use storytelling to bring to life a person's history, culture, perspective, and belief system. They will use their artifacts to tell hidden family stories.
As a culminating project, students will either choose to create an enhanced slideshow or a video podcast. Students are encouraged to choose a project that challenges them and helps them to learn new skills, such as using technology, writing, and speaking.
What are Family Artifacts?
Examples:
Family Photo Album: This album has been handed down from generation to generation.
Hidden Story: The picture frame protects the people that are in the frame.
Pottery Collection: The pottery has been in the family for over 200 years.
Hidden Story: If you drink from the pottery you will have lots of wealth.
Miracle Glass Collection: The glass items multiples the quantity of any item placed in the glass container. Hidden Story:Anything you put into the glass will multiply.
Why Use Projects?
Educational research suggests that students understand what they are learning more deeply when they are engaged in meaningful activities rather than just memorizing facts. This type of learning develops knowledge and skills through an extended task that promotes student inquiry and authentic demonstrations of learning in products and performances.
Here are some findings from research on learning with projects:(Intel Teach, 2007)
- Well-designed project-based units engage students in open-ended, authentic tasks.
- Compelling project tasks empower students to make decisions and apply their interests and passions to culminating products and performances.
- Projects provide an authentic and real-world contenxt for connecting activities and incorporating higher-order thinking around big ideas.
- Students learn through inquiry and have some control over decisions about how they complete project tasks.
- The teacher takes on the role of a facilitator or coach.
- Students often work in collaborative groups, assuming roles that make best use of their individual talents.
- Students have better attendance, are more self-reliant, and enjoy learning more. (Thomas, 2000)
- Academic learning is at least as good in project-based classes as in traditional classes, and sometimes it is better. (Boaler, 1999;SRI,2000)
- Projects allow choices making it possible for students to work in their areas of strength while they are improving in other areas.
- Access to a broader range of learning opportunities in the classroom, providing a strategy for engaging culturally diverse learners (Railsback, 2002)
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