Digital Storytelling with Kindergarten friends

Earlier in the year I created a post about Kindergarten students learning how to use Pixie through allowing them time to explore and play. Taking that time paid off BIG time recently when I had the chance to work with them again using Pixie to create stories.

As we all know little Kindergarten friends don't quite have the handwriting capabilities yet to write out stories. But...boy, do they have some stories to share! I heard stories about everything from pizza to Indiana Jones to playing tag with friends.

These little friends are just starting to learn about the craft of storytelling. The first session we worked together students were creating a drawing and then their story was something like “This is a picture of a cave.” The teacher and I chatted later that day and we discussed the importance of starting to talk to them about basic elements of a story: characters, setting, beginning, middle and ending. The second session we focused on having a quick class discussion to remind everyone of the elements and then made sure to have each student practice telling their story before recording it. At times it was helpful to guide students storytelling with some simple leading questions like:

Who was there?
Where were you?
What happened next?


Now, these stories are still on the basic level, but we could tell they got the idea of the difference between telling about the picture and telling a small story.

Here are a few examples to listen to and enjoy!


Snowman by Sarah from Mary Brothers on Vimeo.






New Clothes from Mary Brothers on Vimeo.

Idea of Playing

Yesterday afternoon I had the pleasure of attending the first gathering of a small group of colleagues interested in discussing The Digital Writing Workshop by Troy Hicks. We were only supposed to meet for an hour but the conversation was flowing so well when we looked at the clock we were of course over that!

An interesting topic of conversation that was raised was the idea of play in using technology. Some educational philosophers share the idea that children learn new concepts through play. Some academic programs are based around the concept of learning through play at the primary level. I say - Yes! - learning through play is a great idea!

When I was teaching first and second grades it was always powerful to allow students time to explore new tools before getting down to "the real work" we were going to do with them. It never failed that the students would start driving the instruction and learning through the discoveries they made while exploring.

I, and others, are finding this same concept of learning through play holding true with students learning new technology tools. By allowing students time to explore/play with a new tool they end up learning the features of that tool. Students end up sharing with one another what they have figured out and this leads to them engaging in conversations. And always, I mean always, they end up figuring out something I didn't even know yet!

What do you think about the idea of play using technology? Is it powerful? Do students learn from it? Feel free to share your thoughts!