Creative Writing #10: An African Storybook Project report back from The Rock Academy…

I am SO thrilled when teachers send reports on how their Digital Storytelling writing is going for the African Storybook Project. This is an amazing project. The plan is to create a huge website of stories for the Grade 1-3 children of Africa where the stories can be read, translated and adapted for use by teachers and students across Africa. The website is due to be launched in July and the idea is to populate it at its launch with donated stories created by mainly South African teachers and students. 

Today’s report back comes from The Rock Academy in Fish Hoek where the Grade 6 teacher, Christine Venter, is working in conjunction with the ICT teacher, Lisa Gair, in engaging the Grade 6s in writing for the project. This is what they say:

“Mrs Gair & Mrs Venter reporting…

Lisa Gair (left - ICT teacher) and Christine Venter (right - Grade 6 teacher) 

The Grade 6 Rock Academy kids have loved taking on this writing adventure. They started off with a bang, ideas were pouring out, and constant chit chat was happening while comparing their ideas. They knuckled down quickly to get their thoughts on paper and developed their story line.  Some were so eager they took their writing home to complete in one afternoon (even though they had 2 weeks to get it done).

Now we're on our animation stage and they are also loving this too. It has been a growing, and fun experience for each child individually and as a class.

They have moved to the ICT Centre and are busy typing up their stories in PowerPoint and doing their illustrations in Paint. We are learning lots of new skills in both programs and are looking forward to reading their final products!”

Mrs Christine Venter with her Grade 6 writing their stories

Thank you SO much for participating in the project and for this wonderful report back Mrs Venter and Mrs Gair – we can’t wait to read your stories!

Try using Storybird with its beautiful art for inspired writing sessions

Storybird can be accessed at http://storybird.com/. This is a wonderful free creative writing site where you can create your own stories using interesting and beautiful images provided by a variety of illustrators. These can be summarised as 'short, art-inspired stories' and they are great for writing collaboratively or for individual writing. Teachers can get a free account for each class with easy access which is a great timesaver. Users can share their stories by sending a URL via e-mail, or they can purchase them.

How to use in the classroom
*Excite the students about becoming a published author
*Explain that their work will be read by people all over the world
*Have the writings be completed before they publish to the web... if they already have a draft of a story. It becomes easier to chunk their sentences to import into different pages to represent the given art work.

Tutorials

Storybird demo.movie

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWrslLyuXk8 

Super Storytelling with StoryBird

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T00YjRBIcIw


An example of  a story
Examples of friendship, love and family in nature



Further Reading
http://www.edutopia.org/blog/storybird-new-teacher-boot-camp-lisa-dabbs

Do try Storybird with your class. It is a great way of encouraging reluctant writer to write and feel very proud of their achievements. 

Use YouTube stories to inspire your class to write...

There are many ways to get your class to write stories. This idea is to use YouTube videos to inspire writing. You could use these in different ways such as:

• Talk about the structure of a story in terms that your age group understands
• Show a video and then discuss the structure of the story or analyse the stages of a story
• Watch the story and ask your class to rewrite it and change it. 

1. Owl Stories by Martin Waddell
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJe0WupukAw




2. Handa’s Surprise by Eileene Browne
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyIV_xYi0as


3. Handa’s Hen by Eileen Browne
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyIV_xYi0as




An example of how to use these videos

Let's make a start by watching ‘Owl Stories’ by Martin Waddell and then let's analyse it. Let’s see how a problem was brought in and resolved to make this beautiful story so appealing. I’ll use the following story structure idea, namely the idea of asking 'What If' and to keep asking 'What if?' until a plot emerges. 

What if question? 'What if the mother of new baby owls didn't come back from hunting for food?'  Keep asking related 'What if' questions and slowly a plot emerges as follows

1. Beginning: The babies are in their nest
2. Middle. A problem is introduced
    a) Mother Owl doesn’t come back.
    b) The baby owls start searching in the dark woods
    c) They discuss where they think Mommy could be
3. The end: The problem is resolved – Mommy comes back and finds them. 

A task
Why not take one of the other stories and see if you can analyse them to see if there was a problem or conflict introduced and resolved and how it impacted the story

Four resource sites every South African teacher should join

Logo Design by FlamingText.com

As the digital age and technology integration with lessons becomes more and more part of our daily lives, teachers look for web resources and new online materials as part of their preparation to help them with their teaching. This is definitely not an easy task for one needs to ‘live’ online in order to be able to keep up with what is available online. So I thought I would mention four very useful resource sites that teachers in South Africa should consider joining.

Microsoft Partners in Learning Network
http://www.pil-network.com/

1. I’ll mention Microsoft’s Partners in Learning Network first since they are having a competition for joining that closes in June. Apart from that this is an incredible resource for teachers with lesson plans, topics, for discussion, opportunities for you to better your digital understanding, tutorials, and opportunities to network with teachers from around the world etc.. Currently they have four million users world wide.
2. Secondly Microsoft has introduced the Microsoft Innovative Educator Expert programme this year  – entries close on two dates for South African teachers (3 June if you would like to be considered as a finalist in the South African Global Forum and ponsored to the Bloemfontein SchoolNet Conference, and the 31 July if you missed the first date. For this competition one needs to upload a learning activity to the Partners in Learning Network. Find out more at this URL http://www.pil-network.com/Educators/Expert. Join today!   

SchoolNetSA
http://www.schoolnet.org.za/

SchoolNet SA is considered South Africa’s leading innovator in professional development programmes in ICT integration and school ICT leadership. We are the national agency for two multi-national teacher development programmes, Intel* Teach to the Future and Microsoft* Partners in Learning. Please join us. Joining SchoolNet as a member brings unique opportunities to teachers. Currently we have two Conferences on the horizon

• Schoolnet Conference in Bloemfontein in July 2013
• We are hosting the first Google in Education summit along with Parklands College at Parklands College in September.

Twitter
https://twitter.com/

This is an international resource site but it is mentioned in this list of four because it is something a South African teacher cannot do without. There are thouands of educators from around the world on Twitter who network, chat, share ideas and resources, collaborate and support each other so why not join them!

Vodacom’s Digital Classroom
http://digitalclassroom.co.za/digitalclassroom/

The Vodacom Mobile Education Programme is a nationwide teacher development initiative to improve the quality of instruction in all subjects, with particular emphasis on Mathematics, Mathematical Literacy and Physical Science at Grade 10 to 12 level. The project focuses on ICT Literacy, as well as the effective use and integration of digital content in the classroom. Join today.

Wondering how to join these sites?

I have added a Slideshare below showing how to join these four resource sites and  have listed some of the benefits of joining each one.

Four resource sites for South African educators to join from Schoolnet SA

There are other lovely South African sites that are also full of useful, free resources for teachers and that you don't actually need to join as such. e-classroom comes to mind. Have you seen their lovely free CAPS-aligned downloadable worksheets that can form the written part of a lesson? They are starting to branch out into other languages and I see that many of their worksheets are now translated to Afrikaans. 

Don't delay - join today!

Webinar recording: How to create and publish digital media online (09/05/2013)

The webinar summary
This webinar supports week four of the Digital Storytelling and the African Storybook Project course. We will be looking at popular creative, free applications especially appealing to students for creating and publishing stories online. We will also look at other ways of publishing digital writing online especially when the writing has been created using a PowerPoint presentation. 

Webinar recording
The webinar attempts to pull together the different aspects for this week.  Thank you to those who attended. 
http://meet78641452.adobeconnect.com/p7zimfhxk2w/


The presentation used for the webinar
I have put the presentation used in the webinar into Slideshare and here it is:

How to publish digital media online from Fiona Beal

Discover the potential of YouTube to motivate you as a teacher

There are so many really amazing, educational videos available on YouTube that can really motivate a teacher. These are often brief but powerful in the message expressed. Take a look at these few examples.

1) Connecting classrooms (1min 53secs)
Cathy Cassidy a Grade 1 teacher from Canada Gr 1 teacher gives 'A brief description of my journey to connect my classroom of 6 and 7 year olds'


2) What most schools don’t teach (5min 46secs)
These famous names in technology such as Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Will.i.am, Chris Bosh, Jack Dorsey, Tony Hsieh, Drew Houston, Gabe Newell, Ruchi Sanghvi, Elena Silenok, Vanessa Hurst, and Hadi Partovi.  express their viewpoints on knowing how to code a computer.


3) The Future of Learning, Networked Society - Ericsson (20 min 16secs)
We’re living in a networked society – a great way to learn anything new. Watch this video as world renowned experts and educators talk about a networked society’s potential to shift away from traditional methods of learning based on memorization and repetition to more holistic approaches that focus on individual students' needs and self expression.


4) What is 21st century learning?(2min 11secs)


These are just a few of the many many offerings that can inspire teachers on YouTube. Do you know of any others to recommend?

Webinar recording: Add your story to PowerPoint and illustrate it (03/05/2013)

The webinar summary
In this webinar, which supports our online course on Digital Storytelling, we will add our already created story to PowerPoint and find ways of illustrating it.

Webinar recording
The webinar attempts to pull together the different aspects for this week.  Thank you to those who attended. I am adding the 6pm webinar:
http://meet78641452.adobeconnect.com/p16xkoenx12/

The presentation used for the webinar
I have put the presentation used in the webinar into Slideshare and here it is:

Add your story to PowerPoint and illustrate it from Fiona Beal

A contribution on avatars from Thaiurie  Govender
During the webinar Thaiurie mentioned another possibility as far as illustrating a story goes – namely the use of avatars and speech bubbles, and kindly sent me a presentation with ideas about creating avators which I am embedding here. Thank you SO much Thaiurie.