Tool 7: Gettin Digital with it- through Story Telling

Digital Storytelling seems to be very similar to Animoto, which is another program I have used online in the past when reliving events that I have coordinated at my school. The above video is just a short snippet of a program called S.O.A.R, which stands for Students Offering Academic Relationships, and this program has been extremely vital for my students and I. The students begin learning basic ball handling skills using basketballs where they eventually progress and move into more challenging skills, such as the Ricochet, Drops, and Spider Dribble. We then choreographed a performance to a recent hit song and the kids began there road to being famous :). This is a little different then Animoto, because you have more freedom to adjust the transitions of your pictures, add commentary, and crop the pictures a little bit more than their site. Now they do offer a free access pass to educators, so that site comes in handy when in a time crunch :). Now I do see this being useful in our particular field of Health Fitness. We reach the Visual, Auditory, and Kinesthetic learners, but I could see us using this particular tool when demonstrating a skill being learned, because we can take clips of ourselves performing the skill, and this would allow it to be broken down step by step. Therefore when we are monitoring all the students this can be playing constantly on a project or Activboard, (Health Fitness NEEDS ONE) this way students could check themselves to make sure that they are following the correct form. Students could use this tool as well to demonstrate the skills, but would need some extra materials, such as digital cameras to take photos. I would be intrigued to see this put into action, and this way the students could see themselves in action, and that way they could correct themselves, as well as critique each other. This would probably have to be utilized at the intermediate grade levels or specifically 4-5th graders. It is like they say a picture is worth a 1000 words, because here in each photo from the SOAR program you can see the positive energy that each child has.