Week 4 Publishing Leadership Project Part 2 of 2

Students playing along with Renaissance music. 

In part 1 of my Publishing/Leadership blog entry I said Edutopia was one place I would consider publishing or presenting the results of my research. I believe the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) would be the second place I would approach to share the results of my Action Research Project.

  ISTE serves educators and education leaders who want to improve teaching and learning by promoting the effective use of technology in PK–12 and teacher education.  That exactly matches where I am now.  I spoke just yesterday to the woman who directs the finances for my school district, and part of the conversation centered around the excellent teacher training offered to our staff by the Technology Director. Despite this, many workshops have very low attendance. There have been several times a workshop I signed up for was cancelled because not enough people signed up. Workshops only need three people!  I am certainly interested in sharing with educators things that worked in my classroom, as well as learning more about what other people are doing.

  As an unintended consequence of my Action Research Project, the English teacher I work with used the green screen I build for a video tribute to Edgar Allen Poe. We also had a student recite the poem "The Raven" in front of the green screen, then laid in pictures suitable to the reading as a background for his reading.  The movie project I did with my world history class really produced two movies. The segment about Beowulf was so long, it warranted its own movie.  One of my world history students was with me for multimedia studies during our last trimester, continuing to sharpen his movie making skills by filming a science class field trip and turning it into a short movie.

  While this year's effort was challenging because of attendance issues, it really laid a groundwork for the use of videography, iMovie and Moviemaker, Audacity and Garage Band, and the use of digital storytelling in future endeavors.

I can also say that each time students participated in tasks directly related to our digital storytelling class, they were engaged.  I had personally thought that increased engagement might lead to better attendance, however, there were too many other variables at play among my alternative high school students for their increased engagement to significantly impact attendance.

  I believe this is the sort of thing members of ISTE and those who attend ISTE's conferences would be interested in hearing about.  I also believe that this experience has given me skills that would make my use of digital storytelling in the classroom more effective in the future.

To read part 1 of my Publishing/Leadership blog entry where I talk about my choice of Edutopia as one venue for presenting my research, please use this link: Patricia Ort Publishing Leadership blog entry 1

 A copy of the presentation I would share at an ISTE, or similar, conference can be viewed at the link below. 

Patricia Ort Leadership Project Presentation

Literature Review  Use this link to read my literature review about the effectiveness of digital storytelling when used in the K-12 classroom.