One Best Thing: Innovation and Creativity in Making Meaning

I have been a writing teacher who writes for many years. As the years have gone by, my understanding of what it means to write and make meaning has expanded to include using different modes: linguistic, visual, aural, gestural, and spatial. When I was still in the classroom, my writing workshop evolved into a multimodal composing studio where my students used a variety of apps like Stop Motion Studio, Book Creator, and Keynote to tell their stories.

In my current role at the Creativity and Innovation Design Network at The Ohio State University, I've been fortunate to work with preservice teachers in my writing methods classes and inservice teachers who want to learn more about including digital technology into their instruction. One of the areas we explored this year was using stop motion video to "explode a moment" in their narrative writing.

We began by mapping a memory, adapted from George Ella Lyon. Some teachers chose to sketch on paper, while others sketched on their iPads. The key was to draw a favorite place and make note of different memories that happened in those places. I shared my own memory map of my grandparents' cabin in northeastern Ohio.

Here a teacher shares her memory map.

Next, I asked them to choose one of the stories that stood out for them. Each person then "exploded the moment," honing in on the memory. They focused on those sensory details...thoughts, feelings, sounds, and sights and created a 6-panel story board.

And then it was time to introduce Stop Motion Studio, an app that makes it very easy to create stop motion videos. After a quick tutorial, emphasizing the importance of not moving the iPad or iPhone, it was time to let them create. Each time I do this activity, I lay out lots of different materials and loose parts for participants to choose from: Play Dough, different kinds of paper, yarn, buttons, children's building toys, ribbon, pipe cleaners, and pieces of wood are among the things that can be found.

Everybody used the materials in different ways and created stop motion videos that expressed their fondest memories.

The teachers and preservice teachers reflected on the process:

• Creating the 6-panel storyboard helped me focus on one aspect of the story and having only 6 boxes made it doable. This is something my students can easily do.
• The openness of this process will allow everyone in my classroom to be successful. The possibilities are endless.
• Being able to bounce ideas off others and see what they were doing helped me make my project even better.
• I felt unsure of myself as I started creating my video. But once I got started, it all came together and I am proud of what I made.
• Using all the different materials let me show how I was feeling sitting around my grandparents' kitchen table. It obviously doesn't look like the real kitchen table, but I could use parts and pieces to symbolize how I felt when I was there.

Stop motion animation is not relegated to only the ELA classroom. We've used it across the content areas. One teacher used it in his 8th grade science class assigning his students to show the movement of earth's tectonic plates. Another used it in her math class as students illustrated their understanding of a variety of equations. The possibilities are endless.

In closing, I'd like to share a quick stop motion video of my own 6-word memoir of this year's journey that I shared at our spring showcase. It's been a pleasure to watch teachers and preservice teachers take on this new creative challenge and then use it with their students.