Animoto-- A Tool for Digital Story

Vacation on the beach

I used Animoto to create my first photo video with photos, text and music. It is easy to register with Facebook account. Adding photos and texts is just as simple as we usually do on social networking sites. However, users can only add 5 or 6 photos with texts to form a 30-second free video. Users will also find it convenient to find proper styles and background music for their music because Animoto suggests many of them. Besides computers, Animoto is available with smart phones and tablets. I made a video to share a girl’s one-day vacation on the beach. We can also use this way to assist teaching.

Firstly, a teacher can assign students to produce videos that work as weekly or monthly journals to reflect their daily life with this tool, aiming at practicing their language consciousness (especially grammar in writing) as well as enlarging their vocabulary. However, there is a character limit on Animoto, so it might be more helpful to ask them to include outlines in videos and leave details (or write the details down in their notebook).

Secondly, we could group students in small groups and ask them to reproduce more interesting stories from other group members’ videos. In this cooperative task, students are motivated to explore and innovate by themselves. New vocabulary or expressions will be added to their current language knowledge.

Thirdly, we can hide texts on the pictures and have students retell the story by writing it down or speaking it out to improve their writing or speaking skills. 

Why Not Try Digital Storytelling?

We must be quite familiar with storytelling because when we were little babies, our sleep was accompanied with storytelling done by our mom. As we grow up, our world is filled up by storytelling of others and ourselves. But what is digital storytelling?

According to Educational Uses of Digital Storytelling, digital storytelling is the practice of using computer-based tools to tell stories. What makes Digital Storytelling different with the traditional storytelling is that the former one is developed through the combination of the latter one and digital content, including images, sound, and video. 

From 7 Things You Should Know about Digital Storytelling we know that digital stories can be instructional, persuasive, historical, or reflective. Therefore, digital storytelling can be used as a part of classroom instruction between the teacher and students. For teachers, it is a novel way of arousing students’ interest, involving students’ participation and awakening their creative potentials. Since most of our future students must grow up with electronic products, combining traditional storytelling with what they like and use a lot is a good way to arouse their interest. With the new element, they are eager to participate and explore more. During the process of producing their own stories, they must gain some new skills or understanding about either the story topic or digital contents. For students, they could open their eyes and be interactive with other classmates by sharing different digital contents and views from the same story. Also, digital storytelling could be an impetus for them to explore more multimedia tools to assist their study.

From the brief introduction and further discussion of the use of digital storytelling, why don’t we try the new way of storytelling in the classroom setting?

Bush Whacker 2---- Start your safari!

I played Bush Whacker 2 three times. At each time, my progress was kept so I could continue to play this strategy game. A player can firstcustomize the character and enter the journey. He/she should whack bushes in a mysterious forest to find items like magic potion, agate and puzzle, which can be used to complete quests of other characters and solve puzzles to the next level. As the level increases, the reward and energy enhance accordingly.

The language learning objective are: 1) to enable students to explore and practice new vocabulary by themselves and 2) to improve the students’’ ability to retell a story logically. For the first objective, since a player will find and use more and more objects in his/her journey. Maybe many or some of them are new to him/her. In order to go through, he/she must be motivated to know the new words. For assessment, I could bring pictures, let the students discuss in groups and then check if they know what are the objects (on the screen or in the inventory) on pictures. After that, I might let them tell the function of those objects to make sure they could practice new vocabulary. For the second objective, because this strategy game is corresponded to a whole storyline, there are various tasks and communication to accomplish each day. A good competence of retelling will not only enhance the language skill but also the logical thinking. I could choose one particular field in one day, give students some time to prepare and group them for discussion.

Generally, Bush Whacker 2 is a great choice to be combined with language learning for beginner and/or intermediate-level ESL/EFLs, but it is not so suitable to complete the language learning objectives for advanced students.