Reflection - Digital Story Telling and other readings

Digital Story Telling
As I've mentioned before, my district has very few resources (digital cameras, video cameras, etc.) that would be required for digital story telling.  However, I can definitely see how using story telling can be very useful in the classroom.  Prior to viewing some videos, I was not too sure about their usefulness.  In particular, it seemed to me that many of the use of digital story telling was using the technology just to use it.  After a few videos though, I may be starting to come around.  In particular, I enjoyed several of the 2nd grade videos that used the story telling to describe their science experiments.  Would this technique replace traditional lab reports.  No.  However, by using a digital medium, students may be able to organize their thoughts about their lab work and be able to share their results more quickly (and visually) with others in their class.  Is this something that I might try, yes.  There might be some technology obstacles, but most I believe can be overcome with a little cooperation between classrooms.  I have yet to investigate screencasting/voice threading in much detail, but plan to do so more in these next few days.  I think I may have come around some.

Use of digital images/video in the science classroom
Of course images and videos help aid in understanding of science concepts.  I do incorporate images in many of my teachings.  As I read the guidelines for good practice, I kept asking myself, do I do this.  Thankfully, I can say yes.  There are occasions when I know I've deviated from the good practice.  When I do deviate, my worst offense is probably that I don't engage the students enough with the images.  To me though, images, graphs, tables, etc. are an excellent way to reinforce the content being presented. 

For some reason, I always am intrigued by articles that discuss copyright.  As a result, I found the website on copyright for educators very useful and interesting.  I found myself as I was reading the website saying things like, "I didn't know I could use that."  I do try try to be careful with what is used in my classroom.  Am I always successful.  Probably not.  Especially when I consider what practices I may have first used when teaching.  Now though, I try to be very thoughtful about what I use.  I probably don't instruct my students enough in this area.