ALA Tuesday, November 2, 2004

Today was the continuation of what the thursday group did last week, telling stories, encouraging storyboarding, and filming their creations. TO begin our storytelling cycle, the students were asked to tell me a story using the stop motion animation cameras. They were shown how to use them to take video clips, and how to edit the clips in with the stop motion animation if they chose. THe students were divided up into groups, and each given a sombrero, a plastic spider, some laboratory goggles, and a balloon, and were instructed to tell a story using these 4 elements. They were not limited to the 4 elements given, but the objects were to be an integral part of the constructed story. Before the students were allowed to use the cameras, however, they were instructed to write. The students were provided storyboard templates to use, as well as pen and paper to help them write. They were given 30 minutes to work on the story of their film, and then 1 hour to work on the filming itself. I asked to see their work in writing. Many of the groups used the storyboard templates, but most of them seemed to want to know if they could use different materials instead of actually writing a story at first. A couple of the groups actually worked on a narrative instead of a storyboard. All of today's groups used the storyboard templates to prepare their films. (Interestingly enough, many of the groups were using filming elements that they didn't even know, such as acting as a director, a writer, and even a cinematographer.) Watching the process of the students as they prepared their stories helped me to work out a tool to give them on wednesday to help describe and identify elements of a successful story.
Jonathon