Digital Stories for ES/MS, Without iPads

"IPad 2 front view" by Tom Morris - Own work. Licensed under CC BY 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.
IPad 2 front view” by Tom MorrisOwn work. Licensed under CC BY 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

iPads are amazing. Revolutionary. Even before the educational uses, they created an entirely new product category. With educational apps they finally enable technology integration in a mode that is developmentally appropriate.

My school doesn’t really have those. At least, not at scale for elementary school (though my next school has them 1:1 for middle school). Finding developmentally appropriate tools for elementary students using our existing Mac Minis has thus been a challenge. Two of my recentĀ trainings have focused on free tools that facilitate digital elementary creativity, and are appropriate for upper elementary and in the case of digital storytelling also lower elementary:

Writing is a critical skills for success. It’s also important, though, to give students the opportunity to access content and show their understanding in a variety of ways, whether to keep weak writers engaged or to work on new skills such as visual literacy. The classic poster is an assignment that can be easily updated and extended to work with digital tools. – HippoBytes, Digital Canvas

Some important Common Core/AERO standards for writing are developing the ability to tell narratives and informative/explanatory texts and using technology to produce and publish written work collaboratively. In this HippoBytes we learned how to use Storyjumper, MyStorymaker and Google Slides to meet these standards. – HippoBytes, Digital Storytelling

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