Effective Online Teaching Tools

In your time as an educator, you’ve no doubt picked up effective teaching techniques. With the recent rise of eLearning, we want to help you adapt those techniques to work just as well online. We’ve already introduced two ideas: Relevant Topic Journaling and Summarize, Reflect, Ask. This week, we’re introducing Digital Storytelling.

The Technique

In Digital Storytelling, students will use all of the digital elements at their fingertips to paint a picture of an academic or personal story that relates to the course materials. Students can record a retelling of the story, or they can act out a skit. You’ll set the parameters, choosing to scale it from a short assignment up to a semester-long project. An example of this might be a 5-week deadline for a 5 minute video. Giving students enough time to brainstorm, record, and edit their video is a key consideration.

The Tool

This teaching technique naturally takes place online, but we’ve still got some recommendations for tools that we think work best. The first option is to create a class YouTube channel and have students upload their videos there. You can name the channel according to the class so that students (and you) can revisit in the future. You could also use Canvas Studio and have students react and respond to each other’s submissions there. Flipgrid is an amazing tool for video creation and discussion as well. Whatever choice you make, challenge students to use visuals and sounds to bring the story to life.

The Impact

Digital Storytelling is similar to Relevant Topic Journaling in its aim. The goal is to get students connected with the course content. By telling their story, they’ll be engaging with the content naturally. This is the strength of Digital Storytelling. So, what are you waiting for? Get students recording their stories today! Just remind them to make sure the camera is on before they start!

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