Teacher and Community-Leader Support

mobile digital arts is working with Jumpstart, an organization that places college students - many of whom are aspiring teachers - in lower income preschools. mobile digital arts helps these students turn their 300 hours of classroom experience into short films and webpages that document their work to prospective employers and publicize the Jumpstart program.

With Elementary, Middle and High Schools, mobile digital arts' goal is to design programs that are adjuncts to projects that are already happening in the classroom. The following is a list of companion computer and software-based programs that could accompany existing projects:

Creative Writing

Students desktop-publish a short story or collection of poems using Microsoft Word to format the text and Adobe Photoshop to create a cover and make or scan imagery to illustrate the story or poem. Students combine text and images, print their work, and bind the final product.

Students create and direct “digital stories” in Adobe Premiere using their own voices, images and stories. Sample stories are My Family, My Heritage, and My Autobiography.

History Projects

Students produce and direct a PBS-style documentary using Adobe Premiere about a subject area they are addressing in class (for example, explorers, presidents, and civil rights). Student work alone or in groups to choose a subject, storyboard their ideas, collect and scan images, write and record a voiceover, and assemble and edit the documentary.

Science

Student use Macromedia Dreamweaver to build a website to host information they are collecting about an ecosystem. They use tables and charts to document sightings of species or plant types. Students use digital cameras to document their ecosystem and the processes they used to collect data.

Geography

Students use Macromedia Flash to create animations that demonstrate the theory of continental drift or the formation of mountain ranges.

Art

Students use Microsoft PowerPoint to create slide shows of the art that they have created in class. Each work is accompanied by either a text caption or a voiceover that describes something about each piece.

Students create a website that is a portfolio of their work after it has been photographed or scanned. Collectively, this becomes a virtual art gallery of student's work. Individual students can take turns “curating” a show based on themes like “Recent Fifth Grade Work,” “Three-dimensional Projects,” or “This Year's Best Photography.”

There is no limit to the number and variety of projects that can be designed to supplement the work that goes on in classrooms. mobile digital arts goal is to support teachers' objectives, not to supplant them.