Helpful Internet Resources

Here are three websites that I've found really helpful in my teaching-- hopefully someone else will find them useful as well...

Center for Media Literacy
www.medialit.org

This is a fantastic website, primarily because it has a document which contains 25 free, downloadable media literacy lesson plans. These lesson plans are all well-organized around themes and are interesting and engaging. Media literacy is something that I have been incorporating into my transitions class, primarily because I see how much influence the media has on my students. Music, movies, television, and advertisements are so powerful and so prominent that they often overpower the other influences in my students’ lives.

TEL.A.VISION
www.telavision.tv

This is another great website that I have also incorporated into my Transitions class. Many of my students need help in setting goals, so this website provided an excellent project for them. Basically, the website allows people to easily create short digital story-like animations, complete with pictures, text slides, music, and effects. The project helped my students think about their goals, they had a great time adding music and other effects, and they were proud of their finished projects.

The Alaska Native Knowledge Network
http://www.ankn.uaf.edu/

The Alaska Native Knowledge Network is a collection of resources about the different Native cultures here in Alaska. One of the things that I like about this site is that most of the resources were created by native people, so they are not using secondhand knowledge and they are not insensitive. I have used this site to for many things, including finding new games for my Native Games class and researching traditional medicinal uses of local plants, among other things.

Alcohol, Assets and Me

Well, here it finally is, my digital story. I plan on using this story as a way to introduce a unit on Developmental Assets with students in my Transitions class. The class is designed for students going through a transition in their life, whether it is from a rural area to Anchorage, one school to another, one household or another, or any other major life change. Since their lives are changing and most of them don’t have a routine quite yet, I think it is important to talk about working on building positive things in one’s life now, to help them feel in charge of their life, rather than feeling like circumstances are taking them for a ride.

My story is actually quite personal, as I share details about my past experiences with alcohol. While it puts my reputation at risk a little bit, I’ve found that the one thing that keeps my students engaged and interested is a sincere personal story. I created the story map with this in mind, so hopefully it comes across as sincerely as I wrote it. From our discussions, I know that alcohol is something that affects the majority of my students’ lives, either directly or indirectly, and so I believe that this is probably the most important thing that they can discuss in this class.

Finally, here is the rubric that I would use to assess students on a digital project. This rubric emphasizes the student choosing a topic that they are interested in and then creating a connection with their audience, using planning and understanding of media guidelines and digital tools to help them achieve those goals.