Welcome to Stories With Purpose!

Stories With Purpose is a workshop for teachers who wish to explore the use of digital narratives (stories told using digital, multimedia tools) as tools for students to bring about social change. Stories With Purpose are digital products that communicate problems, offer solutions, ask questions, and/or draw attention to issues. They are intended to move the creator and viewer to take action.

The workshop is designed for teachers of students in grades K-12. It is applicable in virtually all subject areas, but is most appropriate for science, social studies, and language arts.

Learning Outcomes: At the conclusion of the Stories With Purpose, teachers will:

• Understand the basic concepts of challenge based learning.
• Identify digital narrative resources appropriate for their students' grade levels and abilities.
• Identify free, multimedia resources (images, video, audio, etc.) for digital narrative projects.
• Create a lesson plan for implementing digital narratives in the curriculum.
• Create an assessment plan.
    

Participants should have a few basic technological skills, including web browsing/searching, saving and retrieving files, knowledge of basic multimedia tools (e.g. PowerPoint), and familiarity with digital still and video cameras. By the end of the course, participants will have had practice with basic editing tools and digital narrative resources, such as VoiceThread, an online digital storytelling resource. Additionally, participants will be able to analyze the curriculum, with which they are already familiar, to find opportunities for meaningful student challenges. 

Workshop Groups

You will work with other participants to complete this workshop. Your group should include 2-3 teachers, and it should include teachers of similar subjects or grade levels, if possible.

Wiki Contents 

•  Training Graphic 
•  Pre-Training
• Assessment Strategies 
• Training Videos 
• Final Presentation and Workshop Assessment
• Assignments Outline 
• Planning 

Training Agenda

1. Pre-training (45 minutes)

1. Challenge based learning in the curriculum. (45 minutes)

2. Identify the Challenge (20 minutes)

3. Authentic assessment: Multimedia rubric (1 hour)

4. How-to: VoiceThread for Education (2 hours 10 minutes)

1. Free resources for multimedia projects (10 minutes)

2. Creating a VoiceThread (2 hours) 

5. Presentation/evaluation (45 minutes)

1. Participant sharing/assessment (30 minutes)

2. Workshop assessment (15 minutes) 

Proceed to the Pre-Training page. 

Image source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/teampltw/5124724001/sizes/s/