Literacy, ELL, and Digital Storytelling: 21st Century Learning in Action
Date: January 2009
Summary: Produced by the Pearson Foundation, this short video documents a semester-long digital writing project led by two Bay Area Writing Project teacher-consultants. The video follows students through the creation of digital stories about their family members' immigration experiences.
Bay Area Writing Project teacher-consultants Clifford Lee and Yumi Matsui lead their students through the American Immigration Project.
What does it look like when writing classrooms incorporate digital literacy?
In 2007, two Bay Area Writing Project teacher-consultants, Yumi Matsui and Clifford Lee, collaborated with the Pearson Foundation to document their semester-long, project-based learning unit focused on immigration.
In this project, students created digital stories portraying the immigration experience of a family member or friend.
The Pearson Foundation provided technology and coaching support throughout the project and recorded the process.
Background Materials for the American Immigration Project
Matsui and Lee's digital storytelling project, the American Immigraton Project, is a cross-curricular project that integrates both English language arts and social studies content; documentary filmmaking shorts; and multimedia fiction and nonfiction works.
Cliff Lee provides more details about the project and supplementary classroom resources on the Pearson Foundation website:
- Profile of Clifford Lee
- Classroom Context
- Writing the Voiceover Script
- Best Practices
- Related Links
The Pearson Foundation and the NWP
Over the past four years, the Pearson Foundation has worked with NWP sites and instructors across the country to provide digital storytelling workshops for students and professional development sessions for teachers.
On the Pearson Foundation website , you can view the contributions of NWP teachers, discover samples of student work, download resources, and share educators' challenges, experiences, insights, and tips for optimizing outcomes.
Other NWP teachers profiled include Dave Boardman (Maine Writing Project), Pen Campbell (Third Coast Writing Project), Kevin Hodgson (Western Massachusetts Writing Project), and Judith Rance-Roney (Hudson Valley Writing Project).