Digital Story - Myths about Childhood

I hope you enjoy my digital story of Myths about Childhood. This digital story will be used in my classroom to introduce the realities of childhood. The story may seem dark and depressing at times but the intent is to expose students to the realities that many children face in today’s world; hungry, homeless, abuse, etc.

When I was deciding what to choose I tried to find some topic that I could use to teach the students. I was looking at several ideas that would help enhance what they were learning. I remembered that we introduce Myths of Childhood briefly at the beginning of the semester. This usually is a one day lesson with some quick activities. That is always what the intention is but the lesson always seems to take up a lot of time for something that was to be just a brief discussion. Using the PowerPoint presentation to discuss the topic took up a lot of time. Our department had talked about taking this out of the curriculum but I argued that it is important for students to understand that there are real issues going on with children outside of their immediate understanding of the world. And the activities after the PowerPoint bring home the understanding that these facts are happening right outside their door. This is how I came to choose Myths of Childhood as my digital story project. I am pleased with the outcome of the project but realize that I can work to enhance it as I become more familiar with iMovie. I am also very pleased that what would have taken me 20 to 25 minutes as a lesson, now will take less than 4 minutes. Not only will the digital story have a stronger impact on the students understanding, it will also engage the students toward the learning as opposed to them having to listen to me talk about it.  

What do you think? If you were a student in my class, would this digital story help you to understand Myths about Childhood? What message do you take from watching this video?

Digital Story Draft

Digital Story about Childhood Myths

Here is my draft of my digital story. It is a definite work in progress. This has taken me longer then expected. This is mostly due to learning how to use iMovie. I am so use to using a PC that it has taken many hours just to get this. I still have to do a lot of fixes to it. Let me know what you think. I know I have issues right now with how it looks and the graphics. I need to figure them out. My voiceover may need some help also. Any tips on the voiceover. 

This may seem a little depressing. The unfortunate thing is that with Child Development you sometimes have to talk about the depressing things related to children. This digital story is about the myths of childhood. Students are very colored with the idea that childhood is bliss for all. The media paints a pretty picture for them which they tend to believe. They also have the notion that things happen to other people in other far away lands, not to them and those within their communities. This digital story is for part of a three part intro of the course. Students will view this video and then break off into work groups. There are four areas where activities for each of the myths are discussed. This video will make it easier for me because I will not have to spend a lot of time telling them the information which will allow them to have more time to work on the activities.