TouchCast

I just read about a tool called TouchCast which allows you to make interactive videos (for free). They have an iPad app and beta version for Desktop or Mobile. It's kind of like ThingLink on speed. You can produce a video, that allows you to add anything from the web such as YouTube videos, articles, images, basically anything. Your video pauses and minimizes itself when your learners click on the interactive feature which then becomes the full screen. I'm really excited to try this out myself. For a demo visit TouchCast.com/ or visit their blog at TouchCast Blog/.

Learning Objects

I vividly remember taking a test in the eighth grade that measured spatial reasoning. We never got the results back but I’m pretty sure I failed it. One part of the test was a bunch of gears drawn together with an arrow showing the direction in which one of the gears was turning. From that drawing we were to decide which way another gear (selected by the test) would turn. I pretty much just guessed on every single question. While I was searching for some learning objects, I came across this one on gears which would have been helpful for me to see many years ago.

Gears by nevit. http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/752459/

Watching this learning object, I can easily see that every gear turning clockwise causes the adjacent gear to turn counterclockwise. Seeing these gears in action one time would have allowed me to perform much better on the spatial reasoning test.

The interactive learning objects are probably my favorite. They allow learners to select the content that is new to them without making them revisit what they already know. Simulation allows the learner to dedicate his or her time in exploration to acquire new knowledge. Interactive learning objects are also beneficial to learners as they give immediate feedback and sometimes allow users to manipulate their learning environments.

Uses and Examples of Digital Storytelling

There are many websites floating around in cyberspace on the topic of digital storytelling. At the same time there is also scholarly literature available on this topic as well. Many of these works I surveyed agreed that digital storytelling is best used for personal narratives, memorial stories, educational stories, and topics related to medicine and health.

Even with all of this information at my fingertips, I had a difficult time coming up with examples of applications for digital storytelling in my learning or teaching environment. Since we have creative faculty I thought a good way to use digital storytelling would be to show the faculty a few examples and let them come up with ideas of how it might be used in their classrooms. Simply making them aware of the concept and the tools to create a digital story would be enough for them to get started thinking about how they could use it to present information to their students or to receive projects from their students in a sort of dialogue.

In the online teaching and learning world in general, digital storytelling could be used to create a digital essay, a final project for an experiential learning course, or to express an opinion – fodder for a debate. For example student nurses could create a digital story of their experiences with home health nursing including photos, care plans they have created, and a voice over of what they learned from the experience. Following is a moving video created by a high school student in Papua New Guinea at a workshop facilitated by the Center for Digital Storytelling's Silence Speaks program. His video titled "Washed Away" chronicles his discovery of a baby aborted by a young girl. Told through this medium is difficult to watch.

For additional ideas this wiki offers some great examples of how digital storytelling has been used in the classroom. Examples are organized by content area or discipline followed by a description of the project and links to additional information or examples. This website titled "Educational Uses of Digital Storytelling" is also a useful resource for ideas on how to integrate digital stories into the classroom.