If you're not sure exactly what a digital story is click here to learn more about them and how they are used in education, or just think about BrainPop videos or even Crash Course style videos if you're 7familiar with those titles. The standard that I chose was TN 4.MD.C.7, which states that students will be able to,
"Recognize angle measure as additive. When an angle is decomposed into non-overlapping parts, the angle measure of the whole is the sum of the parts. Solve addition and subtraction problems to find unknown angles on a diagram in real-world and mathematical problems (e.g., by using an equation with a symbol for the unknown angle measure)."
In my digital story, you will see that we review this standard by following "Mary" through a real-world problem where the blueprint for her new slide is missing an angle measurement which she must find. I put this digital story together through a set of royalty-free images that I found on the website Pixabay as well as images that I created myself using Canva (a site that I recommend all creative people become familiar with!). After gathering my images and finalizing my storyline and script I was able to use the free video editing software that was included on my computer (Microsoft images) to create the video and overlay the background music and voice-over. When you watch my video, you will also see that I have included captions, which were a requirement of the project. This as well as image descriptions for each frame of the video were important in ensuring that the content that we created was accessible for students of all ability levels.
Before starting this project, I was honestly quite skeptical of how I was going to be able to turn a math standard into a digital story and was unsure if digital stories would end up being a helpful resource to have in my arsenal of teaching tools but now at the end of my project, I am so glad that I was able to work through all of the steps of putting this together because it gave me a whole new perspective on how technology can be used to enhance students learning. I'll be the first to admit that I'm not a super tech-y person. If I can do it in person or with pen and paper, I will always choose that option but during the Covid-19 pandemic, this was not always an option, and being in a completely virtual world really made me question if I was in a classroom right now, if I would be able to adapt to the position. If you're familiar with the SAMR model of technology integration, I know know that this hesitation is because I viewed technology as a substitution or augmentation rather than a tool to modify and redefine education. Once I got into creating this lesson, I really began to understand how helpful a format like this could be for students who like to learn independently, students who have a hard time focusing for long periods of time, or even just to serve as a quick reminder for students on a concept.
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