I am increasingly intrigued by how I can use tech tools to enhance storytelling and narrative, expository and descriptive prose.

Digital technologies have expanded the way my students communicate their knowledge and present findings.  I find these tools encourage students to consider questions of visual presentation and the user experience. Below, you will find resources that you can use to support teaching and learning.

I like embedding tech into assignments to get students to think about ways they can share their understanding in creative ways. Embedded below is an example from my World History Course last year that I wrote about in my personal blog.

Teaching with StoryMap

Last year I blogged about Knightlab’s impressive storytelling tools. Several of these tools are used by commercial media outlets, but I was excited by their potential use in the classroom. I recently gave an assignment about the Silk Road to my 9th grade world history students to tie our study of Ancient China and Ancient India together.

Here are some of my “go-to” tools. (Note: the icons embedded in the slidedeck are clickable.)

The YouTube playlist below hosts tutorials on how to use the aforementioned tools.  As always, you can email me at amcdonnell@friendscentral.org  or put in a help ticket if you want to talk about ways to use these tools in your teaching. I have used all of the tools mentioned above in my teaching except for Toontastic. Some are real favorites. AdobeSpark is terrific. My students often use it. WeVideo is a go to tool for me when I want to flip my teaching.*  Final note, I also highly recommend Piktochart. I’ll be using it shortly to have students create visual “essays”.

*I screencast with Zoom, edit in WeVideo, upload the video to YouTube and embed questions on the video with EdPuzzle. The whole process takes no longer than 15 minutes to make a quality 5 minute video with questions embedded.  Padraig Barry does this even more often than I do.