I am very excited about this digital storytelling project. In my previous course, I created a wiki "kit" for my students to use to create a digital story in which I gathered resources and created the outline of a project. That, however, was where it ended. I decided for this project that I would use this resource kit I created to actually make the digital story, mainly to use as an example for my students. Because I had already gathered resources and laid out the project, my process for this course, so far, has been very easy. The hardest part was getting my digital story script down to only 5 minutes!
The digital story process is extremely similar to the writing process. When creating either a paper or a digital story, one must brainstorm and collect ideas, draft, revise, and edit their script or paper, and pull everything together to create and publish a finished work. The digital storytelling does require a few extra steps and elements such as gathering your photos, audio, and video.
As I mentioned in a previous post, plagiarism has been an issue in the classroom. With technology, it is much easier for students to just cut and paste information from sources into a word document, put their name on it, and call it their paper. Luckily, with this easy access also comes easier ways to check student papers, using tools such as turnitin.com.
Not all students that plagiarize, however, do it on purpose. Some students simply do not know how to cite properly or at all. To remedy this, I always include one large lesson on proper citation before my first paper of the year/semester, and then do smaller reinforcing lessons before each large paper or project. My students also have citation manuals that they use as well as tutorials on the school library's webpage. I feel that this is something that should be done in all classes that require the students to research to create a product such as social studies and science, not just relying on English classes to give the students all of their research skills.
That's really good that you created a kit to teach your students to create digital stories. This is the perfect opportunity to try it out.
ReplyDeleteI agree that many students plagiarism because they don't know the difference. Plagiarism and copyright infringement should be addressed as early as the expectation that students produce information to support their education. And that begins in elementary school. The concepts are not that difficult to understand and the expectation should be for all students regardless of their age and grade in school. Part of the problem in our school is that we don't have a technology teacher in any of our elementary schools, so those really important parts of learning about using technology responsibly, are just left out.
I certainly agree that much of plagiarism done at the younger grade levels is unintentional and due to lack of knowledge. As Lori mentioned, when we expect students to use outside information in their work, it is time to stop and have a discussion on what plagiarism is and how to avoid it. For the youngest students this may be simply adding a line saying where they obtained a picture. Formatting can wait until they are a little older.
ReplyDeleteI am also eager to use my digital story kit. I had really good intentions to create one before school started, but like most great intentions it didn't happen. I added the resources Mrs. Blanco gave us to my story kit; I just hope that it's not too overwhelming for my 5th graders to have than many tools.
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