Well, it has almost been a year since I really was doing some serious posting! Yikes!  I found the coolest thing I am going to try with my Digital Storytelling students.  This was born out of the fact that I started the year with NO computers. Zero!  That kind of takes a bite out of the digital part of digital storytelling!

We are three weeks in to the new year and I still don't have the new laptops (despite some very hard work and long hours put in by our tech department).  So, we storyboarded commercials (which we can't make yet), and planned and started on the filming of short horror story scenarios.  I have the help (thankfully) of a former student, Bryon, who is a whiz at film and has the answers to the questions I have been asking for the past 6 years! Yay!

So, this week we made zoetropes.  Not bad, really.  While searching for a pattern or demo or something, I ran across the amazing video posted above.  Wow!  In fact, Walt Noon, the person who made the video, has been quite helpful and willing to answer my questions.  So now I am on a quest to build the high tech zoetrope.  I figure I can give the students a circular base to design on, and we can try them all out one at a time and film them.  This could be really cool!

Now I just have to find a way to be amazing a little while longer while we get our new computers and I build the zoetrope.  Gotta say, I can pull that off every once in a while, but being amazing two days in a row...ahhhh.   Picture deer in the headlights...

I'll update my blog as we go along, so that anyone following will be able to see how it goes!