• What are different technologies that people have used over the ages to tell stories?
• How do you use stories in your classroom?
• How can new technologies be used in creative endeavors?
  

• Communications History and Exploring Media Projects

• Run a search (reference search skills from the last workshop) for the following, bookmark websites that tell stories in interesting/innovative ways
  
• Storytelling
  -- Online Storytelling
  -- Digital Storytelling

Discussion (10 minutes)

• Reviewing bookmarked websites

• PowerPoint not just as a presentation tool, but as a storytelling tool.
• What other uses can be applied to this program?

• Using pictures provided or found online, create your own story using this tool.

• How do we create different stories with the same pictures?
• How can this program be used in your classroom in regards to telling stories with pictures, words, or some mix of the two?

Part III: The Sims

The Sims is one of the highest selling video games ever. Is it really a game? What is it for? What do people get out of it?

Discussion: The Sims

• Using it to explore Social/Emotional learning contexts -- the avatars have a need for friends and the basics like food and a clean home.
• The Sims Online – and how it has changed the game-play.
• Talk about other types of programs similar to The Sims

Related Resources:
Sherry Turkle's Life on Screen,
Janet Murray's Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace

Summary: (5 minutes)

Homework:

Discussion: "Better" forms of storytelling media? (5-10 minutes)

• In using multiple forms of media to tell a story, do you think that any one form is “better” at communicating story than another?
• How do other forms of media support or enhance a story?

Homework:

• Next week we will be looking at media literacy more in depth. Please consider one media that you would like to focus on – books, photographs, magazines, the Internet, movies, etc. Write down your idea, considering how you might teach this in your class. Next week we will begin to put together a classroom exercise that will help your students understand media literacy in the context of what you teach.