Digital Storytelling

I am 'B' in my group, so I read Learning Connection-Digital Storytelling.

What: Digital Storytelling is basically a way to help children of all ages read and comprehend better. These strategies help students in subjects: English language arts, social studies, mathematics, science, and special needs. They represent a set of experiences that contribute to their message by explaining each and every strategy they use and how it helps the students. Some of their strategies include fluency, graphic organizers, active listening, cooperative learning, question asking, mental imagery, sequencing, summarizing, and vocabulary. 

So What: Some of the new ideas that stood out to me were Allington's Five Pillars: writing, reciprocal teaching, differentiated reading instruction, access choice and collaboration, classroom organization, and expert tutoring. These five 'pillars' hold up the structure of their teaching strategies. They are very important and one strategy cannot succeed without the other. In order to best help our students learn and retain the information we are teaching, we need to understand their individual needs, help them find their best reading/writing levels and what kind of a learner we are. It is our job as teachers to know these strategies and teach our students through their best paths. It was very informative and we can take these points and expand on them in our future teaching strategies. 

Now what: I can expand upon all of these teaching strategies in my future classrooms. Entire curriculums can be based off of their pillars and ways of teaching children. Allington's Five Pillar's are my favorite part to this article because the stategies are easy to understand and expand upon towards our own ways of teaching. Overall it was a great article and points. 

Article Found At: Richards, P., Royer, R. (Nov. 2008) Learning Connections-Digital Storytelling. Learning and Leading with Technology. Retrieved from CSUSM Cougar Courses site.