Exploring schools through digital storytelling.: June 2016

We decided to create a digital story because it´s a powerful way to communicate with others, it develops creativity and critical thinking, It gives us the opportunity to enhance the 4 linguistic skills, It develops skills and key competences for lifelong learning and it gives us the opportunity to work cooperatively favouring socialization. The advantages of digital storytelling are countless. The main instructional goal was to develop cultural values by creating an original story and sharing it to the world. The very important thing it was the pprocess, not the final project. We are teaching and learning in the 21st century, so we need new methods, new skills, collaborative work... Let´s inspire, encourage learning by exploring, let´s use our imagination, let´s get messy... because learning English is fun! Some students created a digital storytelling project. In this Collaborative project, we included the elements of a fairy tale; other worlds, other creatues; monsters heroes... I shared this idea with my etwinning partners and we started the digital storytelling challenge. The students have been involved in decision making, they became illustrators, writers, readers and even the main characters of their own story.First we used the internet to learn about our etwinning partners, to learn about the project, about ideas on how to overcome our fears to learn a language, other cultures... We made projects and related activities. They will make comic, pictures, stories with paper and pencil and/or they can type the stories on the computer. We talked about the story, we shared ideas to fight "Spooky the monster"... once the illustrations and the audiorecording was complete, we produced it with Kizoa. We celebrated and shared our school activities, We had fun planning and celebrating Halloween workshops and Autumn parties collaborating with etwinning partners learning from each other, we participated in Christmas cards and songds competitions, Christmas cards swap, supporting each other in iniciatives for Peace, celebrating St Patricks day in an innovative way... These situations helped children understand the value of culture and cultural events. STORY VALUES: - We are always willing to learn, we face our fears, we do our best,we put a lot of effort and attention,we make the most of every situation.