Professional Documents
Culture Documents
LITR 630
in developing the necessary skills for utilizing a new online literacy. For my Digital Story I
created a lesson that built upon both my Online Literacy Lesson and Wiki Lesson, and focused
Story. The goal for this lesson was that students would be able to communicate the information
already gathered from the Internet to help students collaboratively publish an Informative
Writing Piece through creating a Digital Story. Students were exposed to a variety of activities in
an I Do, We Do, You Do format which allowed them to complete the activities in a gradual
ILA Standards
This lesson meets a variety of ILA Standards. The first ILA Standard is Standard 1.2:
Candidates understand the historically shared knowledge of the profession and changes over
time in the perceptions of reading and writing development, processes, and components. This
lesson builds upon previous literacy technology lessons and has students working with digital
technology in order to publish an Informative Writing Piece, as opposed to traditional paper and
pencil. This lesson also allows students to use the Writing Process in a step-by-step format when
using the Story Map and Story Board organizers. The second ILA Standard is Standard 2.2:
Candidates use appropriate and varied instructional approaches, including those that develop
connections. This lesson helps students develop their writing skills in a step-by-step fashion, just
like the Writing Process and taking complete sentences to use in their Digital Story. Its allowing
them to orally rehearse their writing, recognizing words they need to include, using complete
sentences, etc. Its allowing them to put their writing together using these strategies into a digital
format.
The third ILA Standard is Standard 2.3: Candidates use a wide range of texts (e.g.
narrative, expository, and poetry) from traditional print, digital, and online resources. Students
had already began their Writing pieces using traditional print, and through the Wiki, but needed
to be exposed to and practice using more digital tools such as a Digital Story to communicate
information about animals so they can enhance their future Informative writing pieces. The
fourth ILA Standard is Standard 4.2: Candidates use a literacy curriculum and engage in
instructional practices that positively impact students knowledge, beliefs, and engagement with
the features of diversity. This lesson allows students to work together in small groups to create
something that they all can present to all of their classmates and every student has a chance to be
a part of the process. The fifth ILA Standard is Standard 5.1: Candidates design the physical
environment to optimize students use of traditional print, digital, and online resources in
reading and writing instruction. This lesson provides students with the opportunity to use what
they have used through traditional print (graphic organizer/story board) and turn it into a digital
resources/story using the program Photo Story 3. Students are also able to utilize the technology
available to them to do this which are the 3 student desktop computers to complete the Digital
Story Assignment.
ISTE Standards
This lesson meets several ISTE Standards. The first ISTE Standard is Standard 1:
Creativity and Innovation Students demonstrate creative thinking, construct knowledge, and
develop innovative products and processes using technology. This lesson specifically focuses on
Standard 1a: Apply existing knowledge to generate new ideas, products, or processes, and
Standard 1b: Create original works as a means of personal or group expression. This lesson
meets these standards through using what they have previously searched for, located, and
synthesized in previous lessons, in order to communicate information for this lesson. It allows
students to use their creative thinking to put together a Digital Story about their groups animal.
It allows them to use a digital tool (Photo Story 3), add pictures, text, and audio in order to
communicate information. Each group will use Photo Story 3 to create their Digital Story which
allows groups to be original, creative, and resourceful when it comes to putting their digital story
use digital media and environments to communicate and work collaboratively, including at a
distance, to support individual learning and contribute to the learning of others. This lesson
specifically focuses on Standard 2a: Interact, collaborate, and publish with peers, experts, or
others employing a variety of digital environments and media, Standard 2b: Communicate
information and ideas effectively to multiple audiences using a variety of media and formats, and
Standard 2d: Contribute to project teams to produce original works or solve problems. Students
need to practice working together and collaborating with other students to explore literacy
technologies. Through this lesson, students are able to collaborate to put a project together using
digital media, communicate their ideas effectively through the use of a digital story program and
prior planning, and produce and publish an original work, Informational Writing piece that is all
made by students.
The third ISTE Standard is Standard 3: Research and Information Fluency - Students
apply digital tools to gather, evaluate, and use information. This lesson specifically focuses on
the ISTE Standard 3b and 3c. ISTE Standard 3b: Locate, organize, analyze, evaluate, synthesize,
and ethically use information from a variety of sources and media and Standard 3c: Evaluate and
select information sources and digital tools based on the appropriateness to specific tasks.
Students meet these standards throughout the lesson by ethically using the information in order
to communicate the information appropriately using a variety of sources including: a Story Map,
a Story Board, and a digital tool, Photo Story 3. They are practicing the communication portion
of technology skills and strategies through making a Digital Story. This lesson also allows for
students to create their digital story and present/communicate it however they would like, based
on the information within their story maps and story boards. Students need to select the
information that makes the most sense in constructing an Informational Writing piece using
The fourth ISTE Standard is Standard 4: Critical Thinking, Problem Solving, and
Decision Making - Students use critical thinking skills to plan and conduct research, manage
projects, solve problems, and make informed decisions using appropriate digital tools and
resources. This lesson specifically focuses on the Standard 4b: Plan and manage activities to
develop a solution or complete a project. This lesson has students practicing organization skills,
planning skills, collaboration skills, and management skills, in order to complete their Digital
Story Assignment. Each group of students must plan what they want their digital story to look,
sound, and feel like, in order to communicate the information about their animal effectively and
efficiently.
The KTS Standard this lesson meets Kentucky Teacher Standard 6: The teacher
demonstrates implementation of technology, but specifically meets KTS Standards 6.1, 6.2, and
6.5. The first KTS Standard is KTS Standard 6.1: Uses available technology to design and plan
instruction. I had to think about the technology that was available within my classroom before
designing the lesson. Within the lesson I planned to incorporate a variety of available
technologies including: my teacher computer, the SMARTBoard, and 3 desktop computers. I had
to have these technologies drive my instruction for this lesson. The second KTS Standard is KTS
Standard 6.2: Uses available technology to implement instruction that facilitates student
learning. Throughout my lesson I implemented the use of a digital resource called Photo Story 3
to create a Digital Story. Using this resource would allow me to better facilitate student learning
The Common Core State Standards that were addressed in this lesson dealt with the
Writing Standards, W.K.2, W.K.6, and W.K.7. This lesson dealt with the Reading Informational
Text Standard RI.K.1, and the Speaking and Listening Standards SL.K.2, SL.K.5, and SL.K.6.
The first CCSS is CCSS W.K.2: Use a combination of drawing, dictating, and writing to
compose informative/explanatory texts in which they name what they are writing about and
supply some information about the topic. Students had to plan, organize, and write out what they
wanted to include in their Informative Writing digital story and give information about a specific
animal. The second CCSS is CCSS W.K.6: With guidance and support from adults, explore a
variety of digital tools to produce and publish writing, including collaboration with peers. Using
the I Do, We Do, You Do format, I was able to expose my students to a new literacy called
Photo Story 3. The students were to use this new literacy in collaborative small groups, to
produce and publish Informative Writing pieces to communicate information about their groups
animal.
The third CCSS is CCSS W.K.7: Participate in shared research and writing projects
(e.g., explore a number of books by a favorite author and express opinions about them).
Throughout this lesson students were to learn how to collaboratively present their Shared
Research information from previous lessons using a Digital Story format as their writing project.
The fourth CCSS is CCSS RI.K1: With prompting and support, ask and answer questions about
key details in a text. Students had to answer questions previously about the Online text and
within this lesson, had to figure out the most important of those key details to include in the
Digital Story.
The fifth CCSS is CCSS SL.K.2: Confirm understanding of a text read aloud or
information presented orally or through other media by asking and answering questions about
key details and requesting clarification if something is not understood. Throughout this lesson
students had to use their best judgement to pull out the most important key details about their
animal that they wanted to express and present in a digital format. When students complete the
We Do and the You Do parts of the lesson, they would be able to ask each other questions, ask
the teacher questions, and then answer questions after they present the information as well. That
way they could get clarification if they still needed some extra help, as well as clarify
information for their classmates too. The sixth CCSS is CCSS SL.K.5: Add drawings or other
visual displays to descriptions as desired to provide additional detail. Students added drawings
and pictures to their Story Maps, Story Boards, and Digital Stories using Photo Story 3. They
were either pictures they pulled from the Internet or drawings that they did using pencils and
crayons or drew them using technology. The seventh CCSS is CCSS SL.K.6: Speak audibly and
express thoughts, feelings, and ideas clearly. This would pertain to the You Do part of the lesson
when they are actually presenting and communicating their Digital Stories to the rest of the class.
I would expect students to speak loudly, clearly, and express their excitement through their audio
Literature on Technology
Students have been previously introduced to the Internet and how we use specific kid-
friendly search engines to locate information about different topics. Then they were asked to
synthesize the information found and write about within a Wiki website. Students are now ready
to communicate the information about their animals found on the Internet further to and work
instruction. Throughout this course, we have read a great deal of literature that discusses Digital
Storytelling, and my Digital Story lesson revolves around research completed by Bernard R.
creative storytellers through the traditional processes of selecting a topic, conducting some
research, writing a script, and developing an interesting story. The overall goal of my lesson
was that students would be able to communicate the information already gathered from the
Internet to help students collaboratively publish an Informative Writing Piece through creating a
Digital Story. Using Digital Storytelling to enhance their Informative Writing piece would allow
them to express themselves so much more, work collaboratively, get students excited about their
learning, and produce a finished product of their work that they would have never been able to
According to Ohler (2005), Writing is key. Even though students' final products are
media-based, the most important tool used in the creation of a digital story is writing scripts and
story treatments. The whole point of this lesson was for students to write and create an
Informative Writing Piece using a digital storytelling tool, and in order to do that, they must still
go through the step-by-step Writing Process in order to do that. They collaborated and worked on
creating their own Story Maps and Story Board, which allowed them to enhance their writing
from the pictures they were going to use, to the order they would present the information, to the
script they had to write. It all ties together and is a part of what makes Digital Storytelling such a
wonderful concept to teach our students. Overall, it is crucial that we expose students to 21st
Century Literacies and Technology, such as Digital Storytelling, so they can be better prepared
for what technology is to come, how to use it effectively, and how to utilize it within a classroom
TPACK Model
The TPACK Model is the ability for teachers to focus and connect three primary forms of
knowledge: Technology, Pedagogy, and Content to effectively integrate technology within the
classroom. According to Davies (2011), In order to properly integrate technology into a school
setting, teacher and students must gain proficiency with specific technologies and have
opportunities to select technology tools to help them accomplish their learning goals. Within
this Digital Storytelling lesson, I had to provide my Content Knowledge (CK) of digital story
tools (Photo Story 3) to the students in order for them to understand what it was they were going
to be creating. I wanted them to create a Digital Story about their groups animal, just like I did
about Zebras. I had to also use my Content Knowledge (CK) to know what standards I was going
to use for this lesson, and how students were going to meet and hopefully master those standards.
I wanted them to be able to communicate their information effectively using their background
which I taught the content based on differentiated instruction and meeting my students needs. I
used the I Do, We Do, You Do format in order to implement the gradual release of responsibility
throughout my lesson, even though we didnt get to the You Do section. I performed a lot of
modeling, guided practice, and then would have small-group collaboration in order for students
to fully understand how they were to use technology to complete the carious activities during the
next days lesson. I had to also model and show how I incorporated the use of my Story
Map/Organizer and Story Board with my script in order to create my Digital Story effectively.
Through connecting all of these elements together, it allows me to become better aware of the
TPACK Model and Standards within my lessons, and ensure that I am incorporating and using
them to reach students on a higher-level when it comes to technology. Overall, the TPACK
Framework allows technology to be heightened, used effectively, and enhance students whole
Ohler, J. (2005). The World of Digital Storytelling. Educational Leadership: Learning in the
Robin, B. R. (2008). Digital Storytelling: A Powerful Technology Tool for the 21st Century