Seven Elements and Weather Effects

Digital storytelling puts thought, consideration, and organization into play. Without a well-thought out, organized storyboard, you can't have an interesting and entertaining story. There are 7 elements that are important to digital storytelling:

- First is point of view, which is the perspective of the author. Living in Corpus Christi, we see many people with tans because of the heat that we get during the summer and the bright sun, but then the tan fades to a lighter color as it gets colder (unless you're the type that goes to a tanning salon regularly).

- The second element is a dramatic question, which will be answered at the end of the story. For my unit plan, it would be, "How does the weather affect how people on the other side of the world look or feel about each other?"

- Emotional content is the third element, which are serious issues that speak to us in a personal and powerful way. Pictures of people that live in areas of extreme or harsh weather conditions, like in Africa where the sun beats down on them or in the harsh cold of Russia where the cold winter is the longest season, would pull on the heartstrings of viewers.

- Fourth is the gift of your voice - a way to personalize the story to help the audience understand the context. My parents come from the Philippines. Although that country is close to the border, they have people with many different skin tones over there. The degree of tan on your skin divides you into classes and makes people believe that just because they have a certain skin tone, they are better or worse than someone else.

- The power of the soundtrack helps to keep the story going strong and supports the scenes that it is associated with. For my digital story, I will use music that will go along with the weather that is shown in the pictures or videos and lend emotional support to those scenes.

- Sixth is economy, which means using the right amount of information to keep your story balanced. Since this will be my first digital story, I'm not sure if I can accomplish this, but I will to the best of my ability without leaving too much out or putting too much into it.

- The final element is pacing. You don't want to go too fast or too slow with your story. If you go too fast, your viewers will not understand what is happening. If you go too slow, the story drags on and doesn't seem as interesting anymore. My story will spend enough time on each image or video and not drag on or have unnecessary information so that it will keep the viewer entertained and they will be chock full of knowledge by the end of the story.

My unit plan deals with the science of weather and how it affects how people look in different parts of the world. I hope I can step up to the challenge of making my digital story a success!

Inquiry/Project-based learning - Its importance in my unit plan

Imagine having to do an assignment for one of your classes about the ocean, its properties, and all the creatures that live in and around it. All you know about your assignment is what your teacher has told you without any further details than what is probably in your textbook.

Do you think that this would be quality teaching on the part of your teacher or quality learning on your part as the student? Personally, I don't think so.

With inquiry-based learning, a student could question the different types of oceans that there are and the different areas of the world that they are situated in, and how all of the creatures in that certain part of the world in that ocean live there and what that certain ocean has to offer the creatures that live in or around it. Why aren't there this certain type of shark in the Arctic Ocean but it is in the Pacific Ocean? Does the temperature of the water attract a certain sort of species that lives there or encourages certain types of plant life to grow there? Would a fish or plant from a warmer climate be able to survive in the cooler climate?

Students could test these different theories with project-based learning, which is a different kind of inquiry-based learning. Students could simulate different oceans with a program on the internet and the life-forms that live in or around them and see how they survive in that ocean as compared to a different ocean, or they could build an ocean habitat for themselves and watch what happens to certain plants or animals that have to survive in waters that are different than their natural habitats and how they flourish in their natural habitats.

This example has almost everything to do with my unit plan. This certain experiment can also be done with people. We can already see how that is happening by looking at all the immigrants that come from different countries to our own country, or by studying how we survive in countries or parts of the world that are different from our own. Why do you think that people live in different parts of the world? Look at the people around you and see how they flourish in that certain part of the world and what they use to keep themselves alive and make a living in their environment. What other factors like the weather of a certain area affect how people look? Do you know why it makes them look that way or how it helps them to survive in their environment? Also, after learning about all the people in and places in different parts of the world, where would you like to live, and why? Explain what qualities attracted you or what caught your interest while you were studying them.