I have a love/hate relationship with technology in my teaching life. I love the possibilities that technology offers and hate dealing with the glitches, the learning curve, and the challenges of keeping my students on task with more creative tasks. When I moved to first grade after the pandemic, I left the creative use of technology mostly behind and instead depended on those practice apps as my primary use of technology in the classroom.

I’ve been starting to feel like my students need opportunities to be creators using technology instead of consumers of content that others have made. So with a bit of a nudge from my sister, I started thinking about a digital storytelling project where my students would create Public Service Announcements (PSAs) for things around our campus that were either going well or need more attention.

We spent time earlier this month studying stories and breaking them down to three main parts: the beginning where the context is set, the problem (or the danger as one student described it), and the solution. They took a wonderful wordless story, Flashlight by Lizi Boyd, condensing it to three drawings that told the major story elements. They wrote their own stories based on a character drawing from our fifth grade penpals including those same three story parts. At this point, I was ready to embark on the digital storytelling project.

So…this week we learned about three photography techniques: bird’s eye view (a perspective from above), bug’s eye view (getting low and looking up), and the rule of thirds (where the focal part of the photograph is positioned in a particular third of the frame). We studied some examples and then headed outside to try on these techniques by going on a photography scavenger hunt. The first graders in my class loved this activity and clearly began to understand the three different techniques. While not all the photos are stunning examples of photography, they are gaining experience with the camera on their iPads and making intentional choices about the photographs they take. Here’s a few first grade examples.

The next day we brainstormed things that our school does well and things that need more attention. We know that our school is quite good at composting and that students need reminders to eat their snack and lunch before running onto the playground to play. We ultimately came up with eight different topics. After students listed their top three topics to work on, I put them into teams so they could help each other to tackle the topic selected. Student then drew the three photographs they would take on campus to create a story of change…a public service announcement.

I was nervous this morning. Would they be able to take photos that would work in their PSA stories? Could they use each other as actors in the photos they envisioned? How would they handle the openness of this task? Would they be distracted and tempted to mess around instead of focusing on the photos?

After a little bit of in-class modeling, we all headed out with iPads in hand. I love it when students surprise me with their creativity and focus…and that was definitely what happened today. Students supported each other, posing and directing. They checked their photos to make sure faces were not visible (one of my requirements), and they all got their 3 photos taken. I loved watching the cooperation and teamwork and was thrilled that I didn’t have to referee any problems. I saw students who are often followers in the classroom take the lead in this creative pursuit and shy students step up to let others know exactly what they needed for their photos. When we returned to the classroom, we spent a few minutes back in teams giving each student a chance to show their photos to each other and tell their story based on the photos.

On Monday we will be learning iMovie and transforming these three still photos into a short video PSA, complete with voiceovers. Wish me luck! My fingers are crossed that our photos will turn into wonderful video PSAs!