Amber Rutan

Artifact Commentary Seven: Visual Narrative Project and Student Samples (Field)
Goals: 2
Standards: 1, 2
While teaching English IV (senior-level English) at my current school district, I was considering new
ways to continue on with our personal narrative writing unit. At the same time, I was also taking my TE
831: Teaching School Subject Matter with Technology course and was asked to repurpose an actual
lesson from my current curriculum, so I chose to look at personal narrative writing. When I created this
assignment I was looking for ways for students to celebrate their writing; students were in the final stages
of revision and editing for a personal narrative paper, and I wanted my students to create a visual/audio
teaser to go along with the final narrative drafts. I create this project description and rubric which required
students to record a section of their personal narrative with a voice recorder and present it on some form
of visual media. I gave them three different optionsGlogster, Photostory/Digital Story, and Weebly.
Students had several days to create their project and I was able to keep a few student samples to use next
semester along with the teacher samples I created as well.
When I had to consider how to incorporate technology into an older lesson plan, I wanted to find an
activity for students to celebrate their traditional writing in a creative 21
st
century way. TE 831 gave me a
great opportunity to create this assignment for my students and allowed me the chance to stay committed
to students as individuals(Standard 1) because they were using their own diverse narrative topics as well
as had the individual choice of what technology and teaser to present to the class. I was also able to
connect to my students interests and lives in meaningful ways(Standard 2) by allowing them to use
their personal stories, which is one of the writing units they enjoy the mostthis allowed me to extend on
that learning in a new, creative way. This assignment also allowed me to expand my pedagogical
knowledge (Goal 2) because this was the first time I have tried this project, and I plan on trying it again
next semester, with some revisions, and capitalizing on some of the inventive student samples that were
created.
This was a great extension for the unit I do on personal narrative writing; it allowed me to not only
expand on my students growing writing skills, but it gave me a chance to integrate meaningful
technology into my current curriculum. It taught me that new ideas dont necessarily have to be entirely
from scratch. I was able to build on productive lessons of my pastbeing the narrative writing my
students were learning the several weeks before thisbut still try something new and innovative. It
helped me see the adding in technology can be a very easy technique and can help students celebrate and
share what they are learning in completely new ways. My students enjoyed this project because it allowed
them to be visual and personalize their work by using their own voice for narration, as well as their own
pictures. It also taught me that students can create some truly dynamic thingsthat you can see in the
student sampleswhen given the time and support with a well structured assignment. Ultimately, it has
helped me be more open to technology revisions in my current lesson plans, rather than creating
completely new lessons around a piece of technology, which I know from my MATC program is
instrumental thinking and the wrong perspective to take. This has helped me stay in a missional thinking
mindset and make technology a helpful tool for my students in relationship to the bigger writing and
revisions goals I have for them.