Templeton Elementary Observation: Digital Story Telling 02/26/2007

Today's session was presented by Anne over digital story telling. As I told her at the school, every example that Anne gave that the students was to create a story for all had elements of pain, suffering, destruction, or crime. Bombs were a favorite topic of the children. From a picture that was of a man eating a pizza slice, the kids all created stories that had bad endings. An example was one story where a group of two students said that the pizza slice had a bomb inside of it because a bunny (I think they said bunny) was going to eat the man. So the man made a pizza fort and was eating the last pizza which had a bomb in it. Another story was that the man was eating the pizza slice to get super powers in which to "burn badguys' eyes out into a million pieces." My point is that these kids all had ideas that invoved bad thoughts. So I wonder where they get these ideas from. My guess would be television. When I was that age I was more concerned with when the next basketball or baseball game was. My parents never allowed me to watch too much tv and even today, when I have a tv in my room and a huge one in the living room, I still do not watch that much tv. In fact, I only watch 24 and star trek if I'm even in the room. Sometimes I watch grey's anatomy with my redheaded friend. But these kids are being exposed to too much TV or video games. That has to be a weakness of modern technology.

However, today the kids did seem to participate quite well. They seemed to be very interested in the powerpoint presentation and especilly the Rosa Parks video. I do see the potential of programs like Powerpoint in the classroom even at such a young age. Most of the kids seemed very interested in the pictures and they loved Anne's story about her dog. I do think that they will be excited to create their own movies.