Excited Teacher Librarian Exploring Digital Storytelling with Classes

My teacher librarian mind exploded with so many different ideas to do with my kiddos at school. October is Computer Literacy month and this is perfect for celebrating. I have already emailed the fourth grade teachers and asked them to pick a new checkout time so I can have the entire 45 minutes with their class next week.  They are studying the symbols and regions of North Carolina in the classroom, well what better way to conclude this project than to make a digital story of North Carolina. This story on Texas inspired me.  I am now in the process of figuring out what tools to use with my 4th graders. Last week my first graders used Flip Cameras to make a movie that demonstrated "How Animals Would See Our Playground" - A Point of View Production.  I would share it but I haven't been able to check their permission forms yet to see who can be put on our web page or shared online.  I can share during class though because it isn't posting it online for the world to see. :-) I am proud of them. I did do a lot of directing because it was the first time they had ever tried something like this before. With that one under my belt from last week I am super excited to try creating Digital Stories with my 4th Graders.  (The Draw my story concept I am going to share also with my teachers when they do biographies and also the art teacher.) 

Another idea that I had from exploring the digital stories was how perfect this would be to help students with opinion and/or persuasive writing. A single-image digital story would be ideal for this. Just this week in Kindergarten they had to pick which David Shannon book was their favorite and explain why. This would be a great extension of that activity and may even get them to give more details since they are able to talk instead of having to write, which at kindergarten level is tricky in itself. They could take a picture of the book and then explain why it is their favorite. That would still be digital story telling wouldn't it? I got this idea after watching this Digital Story.