Internet Research for TechQuest Project

The results of my search...

My research began from watching television with my 3 year old niece. We were watching Dora the Explorer. I could see how excited she was to follow Dora's map to get to the end of the adventure. The map allowed her to see where they have been and where they are headed.

I began thinking that this may be one of the problems with the writing process. It is such a big undertaking that it is difficult to see where you have been and where you are headed... unless you have a map! This is where the analogy and treasure map idea was formed.

I took my idea and headed to the search engines to make the idea come to life. I first visited the Dora the Explorer Website. Dora is all about learning through adventure. They break the concept down into small steps that a child can wrap their head around. This was the direction I wanted to go with my TechQuest.

I then started researching how others have used technology in writing lessons. At a web page titled The Digital Camera in Education by Dr. Terence Cavanaugh & Dr. Catherine Cavanaugh I found a list of ways to use a digital camera in the classroom. One of the suggestions was to use a photo as a prompt for narrative or descriptive writing. I decided this was a great way to get students to notice their body language (face, arms, hands, legs... whole body!) and add it to their writing for style and voice.

I also found a site that explained some of the benefits of using and interactive whiteboard in the classroom titled Using Electronic Whiteboards in Your Classroom: Benefits. From that site you can link to a full text article written by Dr. Mary Ann Bell about the interactive whiteboard.

Prior to this course I didn't know much about digital storytelling. I found very useful definitions that helped spark my thinking at the Center for Digital Storytelling.

In my research on Digital Storytelling I came across the article, Introduction to Electronic Publishing: Planning Lessons: An Elementary and Secondary Teacher Share the Strategies That Work by Gayle Berthiaume and Michelle Bourgeois. They had great ideas on how to digitally publish children's stories. They suggest using KidPix as the illustration software. My school has access to KidPix so I thought that would be a great resource! I used what they suggested and tailored it to my own classroom needs. My first graders LOVE anthology books so I decided to go the route of a digital anthology containing stories from everyone in the class.

I also came across the website, Everybody has a Story to Tell: Digital Storytelling put out by Innovative Teaching Concepts. There were great examples of digital stories. The website lists applications to use and even provides downloads. After my students conquer a digital anthology with PowerPoint, I would love to introduce turning them into more movie like stories using Microsoft PhotoStory 3.

What I learned...

I learned that there are multiple search engines to use. I used Bing, Google, and Ask.com. I used many different phrases when searching. They turned up totally different results. "Writing in the first grade classroom", "Technology in the first grade classroom", "Using technology to teach writing", "digital storytelling", "digital cameras in education", "using PowerPoint with first grade".

Some of the searches turned up great results. Some of them failed to give me information that was useful to me project.

I also found that links within helpful pages proved to be helpful as well! Once I found a good page it seemed that the pages they suggested were also useful.

I learned that there are many ways to go about digital story telling. There are so many that you could have a different treasure at the end of the map each time! It keeps it new and exciting for the children and teacher.