Reflection

     When I began this course, I was quite intimidated by the projects that loomed before me. I had never heard of a portaportal, much less the tk20. I worked on a page of a website last year using weebly.com, but that didn't compare to a complete website devoted to your own classroom. I have never made a digital story, and this proved to be the most challenging of the projects; i.e. getting the audio in sync with the video, which never actually worked to my liking, but I think if you were using a really good program, you could do a lot with a digital story. So, I looked into it.
     I looked at flickr.com and was quite surprised by endless possibilities to incorporate digital storytelling into a curriculum. How much more interesting would a history or science presentation be? Instead of the same old boring routine of standing in front of a class and reading from index cards, you could present an entire digital story complete with pictures, audio, and text and keep everyone's attention. Also at flickr.com, they have a current events, galleries, commons and places section. Each one contains pictures/digital stories that others have uploaded for most anyone to view. You could see photos of any place in the world, visit outer space through NASA, or visit archives from the Smithsonian and public libraries. This feature allows countless ways of exploring any subject.
    The best part of digital storytelling is the involvement and personalization of the story created. Students could feel accomplished when they presented their project to the class on the SMART board, instead of plain white paper. It would give them a sense of ownership, something they could be proud of. If they work in groups on a digital story, there would be little room for one getting left out or one doing all of the work; it would require equal collaboration. I used to think technology hindered creativity. I now see it's quite the opposite. Creativity is not just glue, colored paper, and fancy scissors anymore!