Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Self Evaluation: "The Light of My Life" Digital Storytelling Project

Digital Storytelling Rubric

The rubric above came from a rubric on Rubristar that a teacher created. The teacher made a note that the rubric could be changed or modified to meet your needs. I feel as though this would be a good rubric to use when the kids are just learning the basics of digital story telling. I chose this rubric because most of the rubrics that I saw in this week's readings went along with blogging, so I decided to do a little research on my own to find a rubric to match Digital Storytelling.

Since this is only my second Instructional Media class, I chose to evaluate one of my projects from my Digital Storytelling class, which happened to be my first class, since it was something I had never done before. The purpose of this particular project was to take something we already used in class and modify it so that it could become a digital story. I decided to take one of my five paragraph essays that I have students write in my Language Arts classes, and recreate it to be a digital story. The piece happened to be titled, "The Light of My Life," and the students pick one person who they can't imagine their life without. They then work to describe this person to the audience using specific character traits and supporting details. They also mention why this person is so special to them. When all is said and done, the audience should have a clear idea as to who this person is and why they are special. With the DST project, students would create a storyboard, create a rough draft using 5 paragraphs which would help guide them in the digital storytelling process, and then work on their actual digital story using music, pictures, and voice.

We had to create a sample project to submit, so I created my first digital story about my Dad, who is the light of my life. I went through each step the way my students would, and realized that it was a lot easier than I had expected. I first created a story board to be sure I had all parts covered. I then created my 5 paragraph essay which helped structure the voice over in my story and allowed me to keep a good pace. I then put it all together. I realized that it was much easier to do when you had sufficient planning.  I ended up getting a perfect score (48/48) on this project, and I put a lot of time and energy into it...I even used it as a Father's Day present for my Dad:)

If I were to use the rubric posted above to evaluate my DST project, I would proudly give myself a 100/100. I feel as if I would have perfect marks because according to the rubric, I had a clear purpose stated from the beginning, my voice and pacing kept the story moving (not too fast or too slow), I used various images that followed the story line and I even matched up certain images based on a certain part of the story, the story provided enough information for the viewers to get the idea, but not too much which could cause overkill, and I used appropriate grammar and mechanics in my all parts of my work. Like I said before, I worked very hard on this project and felt as if it was a great project for me to complete. I tend to be a bit of a perfectionist, so it may have taken a me a little more time than it should have;)

Here is "The Light of My Life" project...


I look forward to using this project with my students next year and I plan to use the rubric listed above to get the kids into the flow of things when it comes the DST. I am planning to use that on all basic DST assignments, and possibly tweak it based on the particular assignment.