Digital Stories: A Celebration of Learning and Culture

Getting Ready For School Wiki Schools from around the world were invited to post a video of their first day of school. Students were then able to compare and contrast the experiences gaining global awareness, cultural understanding, and respect for diversity.

http://gettingreadyforschool.wikispaces.com/

The beginning of the school year is a very busy time. We compared how our friends from different countries get ready for school.

Craig, Colorado, USA Beirut, Lebanon

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We Are Pals Wiki The wiki was a place for the students to communicate and express their creativity to their new friends. Each child had a wiki page with pen pal partners from each of the other participating schools. The wiki became an authentic platform to practice reading and writing skills, resulting in academic achievement gains for all. They learned about digital citizenship as they posted to the internet.

http://wearepals.wikispaces.com/

Postings on the wiki included word processing as well as scanned handwritten letters and drawings as seen below:

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There were many opportunities to collaborate, inspire, and gain cultural understanding and respect for diversity

Holidays We CelebrateBelow are opening slides of digital stories created to tell friends about our holiday celebrations.

In the United States we celebrate Thanksgiving on the fourth Thursday of November. Our class made a vodcast of the story of Thanksgiving.

In Beirut we celebrate the days of Eid. First Graders created a voicethread to share how we spend the days of Eid and a movie maker to show how we celebrate it at school.

Links to Holiday digital stories: http://wearepals.wikispaces.com/Holidays+We+Celebrate

http://youngclovers.blogspot.com/2009/11/my-eid-day-voicethread.html

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Digital Storytelling provided an audience for speaking and listening skills as well as a chance to practice creativity. There was an increase in academic achievement for students as they were highly motivated, engaged, and proud to publish their work to the web.

Digital Stories

Children created digital stories and vodcast to share using photostory 3, GoAnimate, windows movie maker, garageband, and GoodWidgets.

Links to digital stories:

Thanksgiving Story

Podcasts and Digital Stories

The Lucky Seed Photostory

The Magic Fish Photostory

Animated Snowman Story

More Podcasts and Digital Stories

First graders shared many science and social studies themes throughout the year. They were able to share their learning by posting activities to the blog and wikis, once again learning about communication, collaboration, creativity, and digital citizenship.

We Are Beautiful ButterfliesChildren from Colorado and Beirut shared the life cycle of the butterfly through art, video storytelling, plays, and songs.

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Links to butterfly postings:

Butterfly Videos

we are beautiful butterflies

Caterpillars and Butterflies

Toys and GamesChildren liked to know what kind of toys and games their friends play. Children in Beirut described their toys and classified the different types of toys and the materials that they are made of. They also learned how to read labels and look for age ranges and safety warnings. Finally, they drew toys they wished they really existed. Children in Colorado made graphs of their favorite toys and created a town to learn about the difference between needs and wants at Christmas time.

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They also shared their favorite outdoor games. Students in Beirut recorded and made their photos

talk by using Glogster. A trip to the park was a common experience!

A Park in Beirut A Park in Colorado

Links: Fun day at the park

toy project

Global awareness and geography skills were put to use as the students manipulated the globe using Google Earth to locate the homes of their friends. There was notable increase in academic achievement in both areas. Variations in seasons and weather were natural learning topics for first graders.

Different Types of Weather

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Children compared the two different types of weather between Colorado and Beirut and learned how weather affects what people wear and do.

In Colorado at a Christmas party, children broke into teams and used toilet paper and props to turn one of their team members into a snowman without snow. A video was posted for the children in Beirut, who enjoyed the idea so much that they tried it themselves. They turned the experience into a lesson about global warming. They also typed in a description of what they did using Voki, a speaking avatar.

Link to videos: http://wearepals.wikispaces.com/Holidays+We+Celebrate

With global awareness comes the realization that we all share the Earth as a home, in spite of the distance between us. First graders in both countries learned about the environment and how important it is to protect our planet.

Taking Care of the Earth

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Children also created an e-book that has an environment theme.

Link: Where Could the Environment Be? E- BOOK

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World Book Day

On World Book Day, children exchanged bookmarks and postcards.

Link:

exchanging bookmarks

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The children learned that there is much more the same about all of us than different. They found through communication and collaboration with one another that we all like and do many of the same things:

We all like to celebrate birthdays and holidays:

We all like sports:

We all like to make things at school:

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The list goes on and on…

We decided that if people everywhere

could make friends when they were six…

there might be far less wars to worry

about later….

Together…we made a video to show that the world we share has “ONE HEART”

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