Week 5 Essential Question

How can digital tools be used to increase understanding? Why can digital storytelling be an authentic assessment? Could digital storytelling be used in your classroom as an assessment? Should students publish their work?

There's the old quote that "a picture says a thousand words" and I believe that could be true with students and their understanding when provided with a digital tool. Students could understand a topic or concept better if they had a digital tool that showed them a story or process with pictures for visual learning. Digital tools are also more interactive which increases student learning as well and students can add music or videos that actually interest them. Digital storytelling can be an authentic assessment because the students are creating their own product and are using a tool to create that product. Teachers still will have a product to assess with a rubric that they have set.

I actually do a couple projects where digital storytelling could be used. In Latin 1 the students do a project on a god/goddess of their choosing and give all their biographical facts. I've had students do powerpoints in the past but most students usually do plain old posters. I know I need to make that project more modern. In Latin 2 students create a children's book in Latin, illustrate it, and share it with the class. That would be a perfect outlet for digital storytelling. I've found over the last five years students are really having less interest in creating posters or projects with their actual hands and would rather go completely digital. It's hard for me because I have to reserve the projector for class but luckily I just did a DonorsChoose project for a projector.

In some situations student should publish their work but not in all. I think it depends on the class and nature of the project that they are doing. If the project had personal information on the student then I don't think they should publish it being underage. If the project was not completely personal then I think students should be able to publish their work if they choose, but I don't think it should be required.