Math Ledge-Ends Episode 1: Divide and Conquer

I created this by working with my colleague, we took the pictures together and did the storyline together but came up with very different end products!

In starting this project I went through many ideas trying to come up with something that would be valuable to me in class, not only as an example of a digital story but for the content of the digital story. I wanted it to be something I could use to demonstrate something the students have to learn. Being able to work with a colleague on this was not only fun but very educational for me. It is great to bounce ideas of one another and come up with something we could both gain knowledge from.

When I was filming the characters for our digital story it created some interest among my students to want to work on one of their own. I like math and could see using this in the math class to have the students show me what they've learned. They'd have to collaborate with a small group to create the digital story on any given math concept. Right now as we are working on division I might have them show the different algorithms for dividing whole numbers and decimals.

After drawing the story map, we proceeded to shoot the pictures and as we went the focus of our story changed. Originally we thought to have the two characters represent two types of students, one who is a problem solver and the other– one who works fast and furiously making mistakes along the way. This was still going to be around the rules of divisibility.

After we did all the pictures I sat down to put them into iMovie. Note to self: iMovie cuts the pictures on all sides so when one takes pictures leave a good sized border... Because we did not do this I decided to retake the pictures. I also realized that some of the pictures did not flow as well as I wanted so I redrew the story board. This time the pictures worked just fine in iMovie. I have not used Comic Life much so was not sure about it. After some trial and error I was able to use it, though not as well as I'd like. My colleague is so much better at Comic Life than I so I'll be taking up some of her time to learn what she knows! I put music to the digital story, I think music always makes everything better. Each problem the characters encountered had different music which was harder than it needed to be. I should have gone to freeplaymusic.com! It was odd that some music that I like really did not fit the story. My hat is off to those who score movies!