We created this column in Storify. If
you would like to follow the links and
resources that we incorporated into
the article, you can access them at
storify.com/GlenBull/telling-stories-through-social-media.
Storify in the Classroom
There are several ways to use Storify
in schools. Teachers can use it to develop handouts for specific topics they
are teaching, as a way to curate the
sometimes vast amounts of electronic
resources on a given subject. Teachers
in some schools encourage students
to use Storify as a research tool. It can
also serve as a writing and editing tool
to develop outlines and drafts of essays and stories. Students have used
Storify to compile stories about current events, create multimedia book
reports, re-enact historical narratives,
and create reports with images and
video for science labs.
For example, Jenny Luca uses Storify
in her 10th grade English class. Their
focus during the last term was a study
of George Orwell’s Animal Farm. Students used Storify to create thematic
studies related to the topic. Aviva Dun-siger used Storify in her first grade
class to record students’ interactions
during a “Scientists in the Schools”
visit and to share rhyming words and
stories that students created.
As a bonus, you can export completed Storify reports in the form of
slides for class presentations. When
students add “slideshow” to the link
for any Storify story, the site generates
one and provides the ability to embed
it on a blog or website.
Educators are using Storify to support flipped classroom models, in
which students complete some class
work on their own to reserve more
classroom time for interactive inquiry.
Storify lets anyone build stories by bringing together media across the web into
a coherent narrative.
For example, teacher Mark Sample
asked his students to watch a video
outside of class and use Twitter to
comment on the video. He then used
Storify to provide context and unify
the student commentaries.
Citizenship in a Digital Age
When LeBeau began her career, many
U.S. communities had just three television stations and one or two newspapers. These professionals evaluated
the validity of sources and filtered
information transmitted to the community. Today, Twitter and Facebook
allow any news or events to be known
almost instantly from any place on the
globe, but from a bewildering variety
of perspectives and agendas. Herman
and his colleagues at Storify developed
a tool that professional journalists
have adopted, but that also allows citizens to develop and practice many of
the same critical evaluation skills.
Perhaps the most powerful use of
Storify in the classroom is as a tool to
improve students’ literacy skills in the
digital age. The act of creating a story
in Storify requires students to evaluate
each source before inclusion, whether
for quality, trustworthiness, aesthetic
appeal, or any number of other criteria. Giving students the opportunity
to strengthen their expertise in evaluation of internet information is a skill
that can resonate well beyond the
walls of the classroom.
Glen Bull is co-director of
the Center for Technology &
Teacher Education in the
Curry School of Education
at the University of Virginia,
USA, and editor of Contem-
porary Issues in Technology
and Teacher Education ( www.CITEjournal.org).
Bull serves as a volunteer columnist for L&L.
