Chef claymation from KidSmart cluster dayMany of us are still marveling at how fast technology is being engaged in our everyday life, an example of this is how newspapers through their websites now allow us to interact with the news through audio and video clips, blogs, polls, emails, "your say" comments, photogalleries and the list goes on. The future is here, and students are developing these important technology skills in their everyday lives.

Teachers are currently embracing these new mediums to enhance student learning experiences for students of all ages within our schools; one such example is the early childhood teachers within the Queensland KidSmart clusters (Rockhampton and Townsville) who have been exploring the concept of using information communication technologies to motivate and challenge students as well as reflecting on how they can use the same technologies to make learning more visible to parents, students and teachers.

At the last cluster meeting in term 2 teachers developed their own digital story telling using Photostory where they captured digitally events within their classrooms and by weaving them with music and narrative they were able create powerful visual evidence of student learning. At the recent term 3 cluster meeting, teachers used Movie Maker to create their own claymation stories. Claymation as with any of the digital story telling mediums is an excellent tool for developing early literacy skills in young children, as it encourages creativity through visual and technical literacy (applying technology to create communication). Teachers not only had lots of fun developing their own creations, but they could see this as a wonderful motivating tool to encourage students to retell and transform favourite stories, or to reflect on an event or possibly to create a preferred scenario.

Four of the claymations are available for viewing online in Windows media format.

Brown Dog went Walking
Chef's Super Sandwich
Boa
Humpty Dumpty