Digital Writing Comes to Life

How can you say no to digital storytelling?  When you get your first ever pink sparkly dress with red high heals and most important I looked like a valentine.  As I read this digital story, I was amazed at the writing, not only the creative aspects of her story which was titled Nothing Ever Happens in Room 228 but most important the use of strong vocabulary, use of figurative language, use of dialogue, and  how her presentation of text and pictures supported her story.  Finally read her own personal reflection on her story, she definitely spiced up her story and connected with developing a stronger character using her reading strategies. And to top it off, "I realized how important revision is and lifting from my writer's notebook to get the same storyline." Perhaps I might have to go out and purchase a pink sparkly dress to celebrate.

Published Authors of Story Kit!

Every trimester we celebrate authors in our class!  It is one of our favorite days in our classroom.  The students work so hard on the writing process and finally they share their stories with their parents along with their friends.  We celebrated last week and once again it was wonderful to see the students excitement and the parents were so impressed with their hard work.  It never fails every year at least one parent says, "Thank you for doing this other wise I might not have seen their finished story."  This year the celebration was really important because the students published only digitally. This year Mr. Mark helped me to link all the stories on our class web page. I did not print their stories because the stories live two places on their iPods and most exciting on our class web page. This is so powerful for so many reasons. First every students can ready every story.  I can use these stories later as mentor text for great leads, dialogue, strong vocabulary etc. Finally next year, I have 24 stories ready to share as student models.  This is so exciting because the students audience increased to the world web-which means anyone including grandparents in Florida, India and Spain can read their grandchild's story.  This is amazing to me and to be honest it is really special because now the students can read their story on the phone as their grandparents look at the story all the way across the world. Digital Literacy is amazing.

Sharing their story with both digital tools!

Digital Storytelling part 1

Last year was the first time I used Story Kit-this year it is so much easier.  I worked out all of the kinks but the BEST part is I have 23 model stories to use with this class.  We started our story telling by reading and examining last year's stories and that was so powerful!  As we looked at their stories, I recorded what they liked about the stories.  This is so powerful because they had ownership of the indicators that we used on the rubric.  

As you read the rubric, I have decided to teach dialogue early in the year.  I know this may be a little crazy, but the students are really doing a nice job handling the challenge. The reason I chose to teach dialogue early is because the two mentor text that I am using had excellent examples of powerful dialogue.  We used: The Summer My Father was Ten and  Nothing Ever Happens on 90th Street. I highly recommend both of these books and I will use them all year as an anchor in my writer's workshop.


The next thing I changed was incorporating writing goals into their digital story telling. This year's class needs constant reminders that everything they learn builds in writing. After our first published piece, Summer Memories, I had my students write one goal for their next piece of published writing.  As you can see below, I added a section to the rubric to have the students' focus on their goal as well as the indicators listed above.

When I passed out the rubric, one students actually said out loud, "Mrs. Caplin you mean I still need to work on strong topic and closing sentences. I thought I was done with that." Oh the joys of learning..............check back later for an update on digital story telling.

Published Authors on Story Kit

I have been working and "playing" on how to create links to share my students' Story Kit stories. If you hit the links for one and two and they don't work, sorry and I will try again.  Here is my best effort for story one and two. 

Story one is an amazing story because she is wonderful writer to start with but the iPod allowed her such creativity with the illustrations both hand drawn and copied off the internet.  When she talked about her story, she loved the connection with Sherlock Holmes and creativity of the pig. Her story had amazing connections with our class read aloud Donavan's Word Jar and connections with our Life Science unit.

Story two is a creative fantasy story, and the setting was perfect since it was Halloween.  Story two's author does not really enjoy writing, and I would have to say he is hesitant at best to write a story. However, the iPod has unlocked writing for him.  I allowed him to compose the entire story on his iPod that was a HUGE release for me, but I was anxious to see if it would make a difference and it certainly did.  The coolest part for me is the wide variety of figurative language.  He used similes, idioms, alliteration, and onomatopoeia all of which had been the focus in our word study and poetry Friday.  His choice of vocabulary was also impressive because he used the online thesaurus to help him with his choice of words.  When we had his final writing conference, he was happiest about how he took a regular fish and changed him into a frightening, freaky, fat scuba diver.  Sometimes as a teacher you just have to throw in your bait and see what you catch.  This time I got a whopper of a good story.

Going Beyond Story Kit

Using her iPod to add  figurative language to her story.

My big goals for second trimester will continue to focus on creativity and creating stories using iPods. After writing conferences this past week, I learned that many students are using Story Kit on their own going beyond what I taught them and extending the use of Story Kit. Here is a list of how students are using the app.

* building an enrichment book: Many times during the day when I am teaching I say if you want to learn more about this idea (for example the multiple meaning of collision) look it up tonight and teach us tomorrow. Students are researching on the internet, taking a snapshot and creating a page in their enrichment book all on their iPod (see example below)

*collecting figurative language from their Just Right book and typing it into notes to use later in their own writing

* researching non fiction and writing about different topics while recording new facts as well as taking snapshots of the topic

*writing a new story because they love the opportunity to draw their own illustrations as well as being able to produce the whole story on their iPod. 

I am so excited and I had no idea the students were doing all of these amazing activities on their iPod.  I am so proud of them!!

They have learned how to bookmark pages to use as research.

Million Dollar Questions

I was lucky enough to have time this weekend to spend time getting caught up on some twitter accounts that I had bookmarked as well as some technology blogs that I follow.  I don't know about you but once school starts I am just trying to keep my head above water with building and implementing strong lesson plans, preparing for student conferences (which I love) and keeping up with the grading. Oh yes and don't forget time to reflect on the lessons that I have taught. But this weekend I watched TED videos  about creativity and play as well as an interview with Will Richardson, I am thankful for time.

I continue to think about iPods in my classroom. At this point in our district, we are almost finished with our first trimester.  I believe I have set the climate where iPods are part of the students' day just like their pencils, writer's notebook and JR book. The iPods are being used to extend their learning beyond school. A key component for me was when iPods became the regular routine and no longer a big deal to use them.  But now as I watched and learned more this weekend, I begin to think about what is next with iPods. To me these are the million dollar questions that I never will quite answer; however, I continue to ask and search for answers.

*How can I use iPods to continue collaboration beyond the blogging in our class? I know that I can have my students blog with other classes in the district, but I want to find experts out in the world-for example a scientist that could explain food chains or food webs. A great example would be from yesterday when I shared James Preller's blog about how revision is hard for him which was perfect because my class has been struggling with revision.

*How can students continue to be creative using their iPods beyond Story Kit?  I want iPods to be a tool for creating as well as collaboration.

*How can I continue to teach my students to be problem solvers and focus on critical thinking using their iPods?  

These are just some of my million dollar questions-if you have any ideas I would love for you to leave a comment.

Hooray! Email finally works for Story Kit

Yesterday was one of those days when I LOVED teaching and yes I am screaming!  The students were so excited as Mr. Mark, our TST, helped the students send me their Story Kit story.  It was so much fun to see their faces light up as I had my email account open on the Smartboard, and they saw their name come through with the story. Here are some of the comments you could here throughout the class.

-Hooray now I can write more stories because I can send them to Mrs. Caplin.

-I want to see my friends stories.

-Look at all the amazing titles.

-It was well worth the wait-but the wait about killed me.

As their stories loaded into my email, I opened them up so the students could see each others. That is where the amazing conversations started including some great questions

-How did you do that graphic?
-Look how Bobby used figurative language.
-How did you mix the art tool with imported graphic?
-I can visualize that in my mind from the BIG words.
-Can we add background color to all the slides?
-Look at the lead that Cindy wrote-I am hooked.
-I went to the same place on vacation I think I will write my own story.

I now have all their digital stories on my own laptop.  I will be able to assess them digitally and my goal is not to have to print them off.  Also the coolest part in my opinion is next week,  Mark is going to teach me how to download the stories to my district web page.  We are going to put them on a password protected link so all the students will be able to see each other stories.  What an amazing tool for them to see their friends stories as well as the parents will be able to read other students stories.  I am so excited that the entire writing process from start to finish was completed on their iPod--can you tell?? On a side note, I would love to share some of the stories with the blogging world so I will be working on learning that process-keep checking back.

Bump in the Road

I knew it would happen at some point with technology. Honestly I would have thought it would have happened sooner than now. We have completed our Story Kit stories and the students are ready to submit them through email however, that is the problem.  Email is very difficult in my perspective with student iPods. I want them to be able to email me their projects, but I don't want them to be able to receive emails from anyone but me.  After much conversation and lots of support from Mark we thought we had it figured out.  The students tried to submit their final story this past Thursday and the email system did not work at my school.  The crazy thing is that the email addresses worked in other buildings in my district as well from Central Office.  How many times has that happened to you with technology?  Ask my friend, Bill at Literate Lives about our crazy technology glitches. The difference now is that I value the iPods as an integral part of our instruction in the classroom, the students ability to create a story on the iPod as well as the opportunity to use a new app.  I am frustrated but not ready to give up which is what I would have done five years ago. A HUGE thanks goes out to Mark and Mike for their help on this glitch! I know this glitch will get figured out for our class, so I can post their wonderful stories in a future blog.

Writing Workhop with iPods

Just looking around my classroom this week during writing workshop was wonderful.  First of all to watch the students complete their entire publishing piece on iPods is amazing. Second to observe and listen to their conversations about writing was fun.  I heard ideas about word choice, writing stronger closing sentences, moving sentences around to support text better and best of all that writing is fun on iPods.  I sat down with a reluctant writer and asked him how iPods have changed his thinking about writing. He told me that writing on iPods is more fun because he felt like he had more freedom because he did not have to erase and use his color pencil for editing.  Also he loves the idea that next week he is going to add his own personal illustrations that he will draw. He said thinking about the illustrations made him add more details to his writing.  Lastly, he realized when we did our share at the end of workshop that he needed to add more details so he went back to his brainstorming and added details. Next week, I wil blog about their final pieces including how adding illustrations and importing photos support their writing.

Simplemind and Time to Explore

I always knew that students need time to explore that includes the classroom the first week of school, the new books on the shelves, the writing workshop toolbox that I have in my classroom, and of course new apps on the iPods.  After adding five new apps this past week, all week I had students come to me and say, Mrs. Caplin did you know.......?  I love those moments.  It is even more fun when I observe the students teaching each other about the apps.

But this week, I was really impressed with some of my students.  We are getting ready to start Story Kit on Tuesday and they are in the middle of the writing process.  I had some students that wanted to use Simplemind app which is a mind mapping tool that is a brainstorming, idea collection and thought structuring device. I was really impressed with their map when they shared it with the class.  I was not sure how to show their web, but I took a snapshot of the map and saved it to my desktop. I then showed the webs on the Smartboard.  It was amazing to hear them explain how this app really helped them organize their writing.  First they liked the color options for putting similar ideas together.  Next they liked being able to move the ideas around and also duplicate ideas if it fit into two categories. The best part for me was that one of the students told me he worked on the app on the way to soccer and another worked on it at their brother's football game.  Learning is everywhere!

Wonderful Word Wednesday New iPod Apps

Excerpt from part of a story

I have added two more apps this week for Wonderful Word Wednesday. I was searching for support with the introduction to parts of speech and an app that would allow students to create their own story.

MAD LIBS:  I remember when I was young, and I loved the paper version of Mad Libs.  Now the students get to practice their parts of speech and create a funny crazy story that they share with their friends. What a great reinforcement for parts of speech.

First page of the model story-some simple hand drawn illustration

STORY KIT:  This is my #1 FAVORITE app and it's FREE! I love it for so many reasons.

*the students create their own personal digital electronic story  

*students can put their original text on the pages

*students can draw original illustrations-what fun for them :)

*students can download pictures from the internet and add them

*sounds can be recorded to support the story

*students can move pages around/edit/revise their story

*to print the stories the students will email their final version to me

Another page of the story but pictures are downloaded from the internet.

on a class email list 
*I will print them for a final assessment

I have high hopes for STORY KIT.  Once I introduce the app I plan on having the students use it for content areas.  They could create a story about European Explorers or the steps of the Scientific Method.  I really believe STORY KIT has endless possibilities.