Reflection

=Latasha Arnold= As a middle school mathematics teacher, I have never thought of using digital stories within my classes. I have created a digital story for another project, but found it difficult to tie into my subject area. This project provided me with the opportunity to bring more ideas into my collaboration meeting at school. Benefits:
 * This project can benefit any teacher within their classroom. It is a great way to incorporate life skills within course content.

Challenges: 20/20 =Cliff Kicklighter= As a high school technology teacher, I have done DST projects with my students in the past so, this was not a new concept to me. I did not have a great knowledge of the material that our presentation was over. This project gave me a good “refresher” course on the happenings of the civil war. Benefits: Challenges: 20/20: =Jami O'Connor= As a first grade teacher, this assignment dove into more information than I am used to to teaching. First grade does not teach the Civil War so I had to rely on my team members to help with the facts that we wanted to use. Benefits:
 * My biggest challenge with this project was communication on my part. I was sick with allergy and sinus infections. This caused some ineffective communication on my end.
 * I would have tried to communicate more effectively.
 * I believe this project will greatly benefit anyone interested in implementing DST into their classroom. I also believe our particular project will benefit anyone teaching the major parts of the Civil War.
 * I felt like it was a great challenge to complete a video project at a distance. I also felt like there were not enough “main” parts for the entire group to split up equally.
 * I think our group did a really good job of dividing specific tasks for the project. I wish I could have helped more in the creation of our actual video but, when you work at a distance, that is nearly impossible to do.
 * I think that it was easy to use this assignment to incorporate character traits of all kinds. I think we could have added more character traits if we had wanted and it would have fit into the story line just as easy.

Challenges:
 * Although courage is easily told and discussed, finding images that really portrayed courage was a bit challenging. The images of battles showed courage but if we had not added the slides explaining courage then the viewer may not have taken away courage from the images and may have interpreted the images in their own way.
 * Taking video from another and adding it to the project. There were conversion issues from email to project so no matter how many ways we tried, the video still did not work and we had to create an alternate presentation using the videos of the students.

20/20
 * I know some felt they were doing so much for the project while others may have felt they were not doing as much as others. A clearer breakdown of the project and expectations may work better on future assignments.
 * More discussion on what exactly the final project should be. It is easy to add too much to a project and make the project harder than it is.

All in all I loved working with this group. This group had constant feedback and critiques that were useful. I feel we worked very well together and kept in constant communication. =Sharon Purucker:= As a middle school media specialist, I found this lesson to be beneficial because I can share it with the eighth grade social studies teachers at my school. Working on this project allowed me to find many resources that align with eighth grade standards concerning the Civil War. I appreciate the way our group embraced the project. I believe this group worked well together. Benefits: Challenges: 20/20: = =
 * I found many resources on the Civil War that will benefit eight grade classes.
 * In creating a lesson that incorporates digital storytelling allows students to have a deeper understanding of the unit.
 * Working with digital storytelling gives students an opportunity to create multimedia projects.
 * I found it difficult to collaborate on a video project online.
 * Although not impossible, it was a bit difficult incorporating the character trait because the lesson became longer.
 * I found that I was continually updating the classroom use and instructional activity to make sure the lesson included all information necessary to be successful for this project.
 * I would like to find a different format to share and merge different videos.
 * Having the digital story assessment assigned to the person making the video would make this task easier.