October 2020 Agenda—Rockford, Illinois
Begin at 9:00am
Getting Connected
Digitally…Socially…Spiritually
To Wifi: RLHS Password: crusaders11
To each other – Grab a breakfast item and chat with your fellow teachers!
Devotion
Announcements
1. The next workshop date is scheduled for Thursday, November 12th.
2. Any local, regional, or national events??
Review
Let’s take some time to reflect on last month’s TEC21 Challenges and share experiences. Share a success, a challenge you experienced or a lesson learned.
Goals
- Discover the value of engaging your students in a digital storytelling project.
- Explore digital storytelling tools and resources to use with your students.
- Identify a tool or resource to share with a colleague.
Digital Storytelling
Everyone has a story to tell! What’s yours?
“Digital storytelling has emerged as a fundamental, cross-curricular technique that provides structure for both sharing and understanding new information. It has become an essential way of providing information and enhancing education…by making abstract or conceptual content more understandable. In all disciplines, it offers more ways to engage students and enrich learning through the inclusion of digital media that represents, illustrates, and demonstrates. Digital storytelling brings together text, graphics, audio, and video around a chosen theme, often with a specific point of view. Bernard Robin observes that a digital story may be a personal tale, a depiction of a historical event, or simply a way to creatively impart information or provide instruction. In the classroom, they can also foster collaboration when students are able to work in groups, and enhance the student experience through a personal sense of accomplishment (Robin, 2006). The National Council of Teachers of English in 2003, challenged teachers to develop instructional strategies for students to master composing in nonprint media that could include any combination of visual art, motion (video and film), graphics, text, and sound—all of which are frequently written and read in nonlinear fashion (Porter, 2008, p. 11). Included was the process of digital storytelling, where information is conveyed in a way that is more engaging than plain text.” Strategies for digital communication skills across disciplines: The importance of digital stories (Links to an external site.)
Common Core writing standards require writing and publishing using digital tools beginning already in Kindergarten and continuing through Grade 12.
Use technology, including the Internet, to produce and publish writing and present the relationships between information and ideas efficiently as well as to interact and collaborate with others.
Use technology, including the Internet, to produce, publish, and update individual or shared writing products in response to ongoing feedback, including new arguments or information.
How do we get started?
Choose a character and write their story!
Traditional Books
Paper Slide Videos
Paper Slide videos are one of the quickest (and easiest, in my opinion) for getting started with digital storytelling! Check out how to make one below.
Here is a link to a sample rubric if you want to get an idea of how to make one for a paper slide video.
Stop Motion
Stop Motion videos use a series of pictures and narration to tell the story. Here are some links to resources to get you started:
Makerspace for Education – Stop Motion Resources and Tutorial – guiding article and resource stop for teachers!
5 Excellent Apps for Creating Educational Stop Motion Videos
How to Make a Simple Stop Motion Video with Windows Movie Maker – from Instructables
Stop Motion Animator (Chrome App)
Using Google Slides for Stop Motion Animation
StopMotion App – Apple or Android
LEGO Movie Maker App – Apple
10 Handiest Apps for Stop Motion Animation
Create your own looping slideshow for animation Sample
Digital Citizenship Integration
Whether students are learning in-person, remotely or in hybrid scenarios, online learning activities are a part of the education process. As educational leaders, we have the extraordinary opportunity to be a positive influence in their lives when it comes to modeling and teaching them about digital citizenship. Common Sense is a nonprofit organization dedicated to provide parents and teachers lessons and resources to teach children in grades K-12 skills and responsible behaviors to thrive in the 21st century. Below are their six core curriculum topics. Check out their website HERE.
- Media Balance & Well-being
- Privacy & Security
- Digital Footprint & Identity
- Relationships & Communication
- Cyberbullying, Digital Drama & Hate Speech
- News & Media Literacy
Digital Tools & Resources

Book Creator is the simple way to make your own beautiful ebooks, With over 30 million ebooks created so far, Book Creator is ideal for making all kinds of books, including children’s picturebooks, comic books, photo books, journals, textbooks and more.
web, iOS
Free for up to 40 books

ChatterPix is a user-friendly app that takes a simple photo and makes it talk. Students can upload pictures or take them straight from the app, draw a mouth on the object, and record their voice to have the image tell a story!
iOS
Free


Draw and Tell is an award-winning creative tool for children of all ages that encourages imagination, story telling and open-ended play. Use the tool to draw, color, decorate with stickers, create animations and record stories. AGES: 3-9.
iOS
Free

Adobe Spark: Transform your ideas into stunning visual stories. Create impactful social graphics, web pages, and short videos in minutes with Adobe Spark
Have you ever heard of Genius Hour? Listed below are several resources to help understand what it is all about and why some teachers have been integrating this project-based learning strategy into their classrooms. Jerrita Staehr, one of our workshop facilitators, created all of the necessary assets for TEC21 Teachers to use either for themselves during their TEC21 experience or to make copies and adapt them to use with their students. She’s broken it down into steps and provided wonderful examples and templates. Excellent work, Jerrita, and thank you for sharing this with everyone! Here’s a link to the shared Google folder with all of her resources if you are are interested: Jerrita’s Genius Hour TEC21 Style Resources.
- “What is Genius Hour?” (Genius Hour)
- How to Build Community Leaders of Today – And Tomorrow – Through Genius Hour (EdSurge, 2017)
- Genius Hour in Elementary School (Edutopia, 2017)
- Tips and Tricks to Keep Kids on Track During Genius Hour (MindShift, 2017)
- Inspire Drive, Creativity in the Classroom with 20-Time (20-Time in Education)
- 20-Time Projects in Education: 41 Projects in 4 Minutes (YouTube, 2014)
Storyboard That is an online story board creator.There is a free version, but it doesn’t give a lot of options.
Web
Free trial and then $9.99 per month
Easy interface to create videos.
Puppet EDU includes pictures, voice, video, maps and more as you create a digital story. Excellent free tool! Search tool checks NASA, museums, and more for free images! Tutorial
Ditch that Textbook by Matt Miller is a wonderful teaching and ed tech blog. In this blogpost, he explains how to use screencasting to create videos for your students in various capacities.
Web-based, type in what you want an avatar to say. Perfect for story retelling or to hear another character’s side of the story.
Free or $4.99/month
Felt Board
PicLits is a creative writing site that allows you to drag and drop words onto a background.
Web
Free
Lunch Hour at 11:30am/Back to Work at 12:30pm
Project Development
TEC21 Challenges
- Digital: Engage your students in a digital storytelling activity or project. Share your experience by posting for others to see!
- Social: Post a question, an answer, a resource, a picture of your students working on digital storytelling, or an example of a student project to the TEC21 Educators Group on Facebook.
- Spiritual: Be a resource to at least one new person on your faculty before we meet again.
Reflection
To open the reflection in its own tab, select HERE.
Dismiss at 2:00pm
My Contact Info
Email: acrouch@rockfordlutheran.org
Phone: (815) 985-4351