Digital Story Reflection

This video is an informative digital story that teaches high school students to write a persuasive essay for their history class. The video walks students through both the steps of creating an essay and a specific example (the American Revolution). In response to feedback I received, I would liked to clarify that I don't envision this video replacing classroom instruction, but instead I see it as a way to support students when they are outside of class and need a refresher course. I used a new-to-me free video editing program called Da Vinci Resolve to create this video and then I uploaded the final product to YouTube. I recorded 29 separate voice segments and used Creative Commons to search for images that matched with my voice-overs. Then I uploaded each of these in order, finally adding a soundtrack at the end. The last step was to add transitions between the images. I had planned to use WeVideo, another free tool that I am more familiar with, however the downside to WeVideo is that you can only publish five minutes of content each month, which would not have been enough to thoroughly explain the parts of the essay, and I would have had to cut an entire section to make it fit. As a result, there were a few features lacking from my final product that I would have liked to include. For example, I would have liked to make the pictures move to give each segment more visual life. After watching it a few times and getting feedback from my classmates, I also would have liked to include the text to the "essay" that I wrote. I think that if the text had been scrolling over the images while I spoke it, then it might have helped a more visual learner understand what I was saying. I'm not entirely sure how to make this happen in the new program, but I'm sure with more time and work I could make it happen, especially in a future video.

Digital storytelling is really great for students who may need to have a concept reinforced, it's like taking the teacher home with you when you are sitting down to write your essay. In addition, I could see using this tool with students to create their own projects, as the planning and creation process builds both literacy and soft skills. If I were doing a similar project with students, I would certainly pare down the time requirements and the scope of the project so it was more manageable, as this project took me hours to complete and I had to work through several frustrations to make it come together. I might also make a tutorial for how to use the program, or link students to several videos that are already on YouTube. In terms of creating the voice-over, the room needs to be totally silent, so finding the physical space to have students create this in class could be challenging. I might have to have students work in the hallway or reserve another quiet space for a class period so everyone could have an opportunity to get the sound recorded. Please let me know what you think, and if you have any suggestions for potential challenges I might face using this in the classroom and any solutions you might have.