Digital storytelling

I'm wondering if any of you have used any of the digital storytelling resources online??  We do a lot of storytelling in the world language dept and would like to encorporate this technology into our curriculum for next year.  Please share if you have used any.

Merci

Sample research questions, beginning level

Biography project on famous frenchies. My students have chosen a topic.  They registered on the research project calculator.  they began to write research questions.  they have recorded 8-10 facts in French.  They are about to research in depth their research questions, which is step 2 "Gather information".

I am concerned about the quality of their research questions.  Wondering where we could find a list of examples of good, simple research questions from ??  middle school science fair/history day projects.  Does any one have any suggestions??

Facebook: luv it at home, ??classroom use

I think I should be a p.r. person for the Facebook company.  I love the online social networking!  It is a wonderful option for the full time working parent of 3 children who rarely wanders out of the 3 mile radius from her house besides to go to work.  

Facebook allows me to "keep in touch" with friends by checking on their online pictures and reading updates.  It allows me to feel like I am keeping up with people who I am only able to see in person and/or talk "live" to/with a couple times a year.  

In addition to this it is a time saver.  I can check in with people without having to commit lots of time to socializing.  I can  check in with them on my schedule, usually late at night, and not worry about the hour.

I am considering using facebook for a class project.  I would begin a different facebook page that I would use just for school and with another email address.  has anyone tried this for a class project, ongoing discussions with easy photo access, etc??

How can we YouTube in Mpls schools?

I really want to show the copyright video about Creative Commons that we saw in class titled,  "Wanna Work Together?"   The problem is that the video is on YouTube.  Is  my best option to save it to my computer at home and then burn it to a disk?  I just tried that and ?maybe it was a bad disc, but it didn't work.  

Any suggestions or easy ways to save a YouTube video some other way, ?memory stick?, let me know, please.  I'm hoping to show it this Friday to my students if i can find a way.

Merci!

G-cast and the big $$ charge for calling in???

Thanks Karen for the alternate sites. I must say that I was all set up to use this as a great and easy way to have my students practice and assess their speaking skills. However, I am not ready to cough up the $100 yet.

I did put up the website and directions on my teacher page, along with a list of speaking assignments for this quarter. I look forward to playing with the alternate sites and learning about them more before I actually assign this work.

Let me know if anyone has used other options for Gcast, other than podcasting from a computer. I have done that and know how, but was looking forward to an easier method that was more available and quick for all students.

The Language Menu

Gaelle Berg sent me a website link that is another great resource for fellow language teachers. It is called Language Menu and has vocabulary games, concentration/memory, geography, etc. on all the basic topics and in many different languages. I am going to try out one of these in class with my students as a warm up activity this week.

Another warm up that I have liked using is the Clickers. Students like doing their warm ups this way and for quizzes it is a great way to give a Pretest and/or a quiz of any kind and get immediate feedback.

Fourth quarter...the research project!

This quarter I am going to do something different with my final project. I am going to imbed the work into the entire quarter and work on it a little each week. I also plan to complete it and grade it by the end of week 8. This way students wgho did not complete the project, usually because they don't believe me how much a summative assessment worth 35% of their grade can change their grade, they will have a full week to complete it if they wish to improve their grade before the end of the quarter.

I also really like the idea of feeling like the project not only is totally connected to our main focus of the quarter, but that it is imbedded and not something done at the end. The reason for this is that I wish I had started the Autobiography project during the first weeks of the quarter, instead of waiting til week 7.

Our research project is going to be on a French-speaking (francophone) person of their choice. I have dropped the idea of making them choose a musician, and have decided that my main goal is to encourage them to find a personal link to the french world via someone they are interested in for their own personal reasons.

I am still considering allowing students to work in small groups or with a partner, to support their need to socialize during spring/final quarter. I have a Wikpedia list of Frenchies on my website and am going to have students choose their person this week. I am also going to try out the Research Calculator next week in the lab with students. Any recommendations from teachers who have used it so far would be welcome! Merci.