Project Based Learning > Digital Storytelling
Digital Storytelling: Project Based Learning from the NAF Network
What’s a good way to integrate 21st Century Skills and the objectives of a rigorous academic program? Try Digital Storytelling, a methodology for hands-on teaching and learning that combines traditional writing, research and communication skills with collaboration, teamwork, subject area expertise and technology integration. See the materials and sample work below for examples of how NAF teachers and students are using digital storytelling in schools and classrooms across the country.
Project Based Learning and NAF’s Year of Planning
NAF and the Pearson Foundation have developed a project-based-learning supplement to the NAF’s Year of Planning program. This professional development session supports new Academy teams as they develop their outreach programs. Working in teams, participants develop a finished digital product that supports the recruitment, communications, and network-building goals of their new Academy programs.
Five lead sites from around the country took part in developing this project-based-learning approach to NAF’s Year of Planning.
View more information on the projects these teams completed and the high-level reform issues at work in each location. >Project Based Learning and Student Internships
NAF and the Pearson Foundation together have modified the Pearson Foundation’s Capturing a Career video project for use by NAF students as they prepare to apply for internships following their junior year.
The NAF Capturing a Career program makes use of project-based-learning approaches and methodologies, all designed to make it possible for students to present information on their skills, academic and personal experiences, and career ambitions in a short digital film they create themselves. Using interview footage and supporting images, participants assemble a video presentation that tells a story of skill development, personal growth, and achievement in the classroom and the workplace.
Though the program is designed to help students present themselves to potential employers, students can also use their finished films as a component of a broader electronic portfolio or year-end capstone project.
View more information on Capturing a Career. >Project Based Learning in the Classroom
NAF and the Pearson Foundation together have also employed project based learning approaches and techniques in the classroom – most often by enabling NAF students to create films that expand and document their knowledge of curricular objectives.
Using the digital storytelling process, Academy teachers can integrate media projects in their lessons in a way that also encourages skills such as writing, communication, critical thinking, public speaking, and collaboration.
View information on a workshop completed by an English AOIT class at Hoover High School in San Diego. >Join the Conversation
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