Photostory

What a great tool we have as educators to use in our classroom! Photostory gives our students the opportunity to learn, while they create for themselves a potrayal of a certain event, an informational video, an opportunity to teach morals or ethics, and etc. This gives students an opportunity to expound and teach visually to their peers something that they are passionate about. This is a great way for students to explore different modes of learning, as well as to explore and come to know themselves through creative means.
Photostory is also a tool that teachers can use individually for their classroom, as well as collectively as they collaborate with other teachers. It would be beneficial to get together with other teachers in your grade and make a photostory depicting a historical even from your grade core curriculum. For example, if you were teaching fourth grade, you could make a photostory of how the state of Utah was settled, and the sacrifices that some of our predecessors made so that we can live in the state that we do now. In class we talked a bit about the emotion that photo story can portray. This gives students an opportuniy to connect with what happened 160 + years ago, and helps them to understand and appreciate the magnitude of the sacrifices that were made.
In another class that we had two days after we learned about photostory, one of our teachers showed a 7 minute clip of a movie that was made about the Civil War. It was a clip of one of the battles where many soldiers died. This provided us with an opportunity to see the impact that these deaths had on some of the other soldiers. It helped to enhance our understanding of the conviction and determination that these soldiers had in fighting for their cause. This was far more effective than reading about this event from a text book where you may only get the facts. The fact that this teacher used this clip in our class tells us why this could be so popular among teachers and other colleagues. You really are involved for a moment in what is happening, and it provokes a lot of questions. For instance, while I was watching this movies some of my thoughts were, "why did this really happen?", "was it worth it?", "couldn't there have been other means of settling this disagreement?". It eventually let me to want to learn more. What a powerful way to inspire our students.
Showing a photostory seems to be a good "anticipatory set" for our students, or way to grab their attention and interest as we introduce a new subject, topic, or unit. Finding an "attention grabber" seems to be the most difficult task in reaching any learning objective. In order for students to really learn, they need to be interested. I would use photostory in this manner, but I would also use it to supplement and enhance learning.
Their are many Pro's to digital story. I have already mentioned a few, but others would be that it would be something that you could use year after year. You could also share some of your creations, or other student's creations with your colleagues. I also saw a few on teacher tube that you could use. It seems that their are a lot of resources out their. One of the cons would be that they would take time, effort, and lots of creativity to create. It would be better to work with other teachers or collaborators to get a better product from your endeavors.
The Nasa Digital Story that was assigned for this week was another one of those emotional stories that got you involved in some of the events that occured along the road to outer-space discovery. The music fit this story very well. As music, as well as stories, has a climax, this music helped us to reach a point where we could realize the sacrifices that some of our astronauts have made on our behalf. Again, I thought it seemed strange that our country would put so much money, and risk so many lives to keep up with and eventually conquer Russian in outerspace aeronautics. However, when this story showed the benefits that our country and the world has received from flights to outerspace, it seemed that the benefits outweighed the costs.