Christmas story-telling is fun, bringing the stories to life is better

Our 8e French classes experienced the old-time tradition of Christmas story- telling in a new way via a collaborative creative-writing exercise using their iPads. New 21st century skills such as creativity, communication and the use of information technology were learned throughout the work.

The aim of the teachers was ambitious: nothing less than the publication of a collection of Christmas stories both in printed and digital format, using the students’ productions and combining text with video. The goal was not simply to produce something really spectaclar at the end, but to help students discover the skill of story-telling as well as developing their writing skills.

The process adopted was that of an interdisciplinary project combining the study of French literature and language, IT and visual arts.

Collaborative writing, which is a fundamental part of the curriculum, is greatly enriched through the use of digital technology.

First the number of available resources is considerably increased and can be easily adapted to every writing situation.

Secondly, this technology greatly facilitates writing collaboration because students no longer have to edit and correct texts manually, therefore giving them the opportunity to tackle substantially longer texts.

Finally, and this is probably the most interesting aspect of the project, texts stored in the cloud can easily be transformed into animation.

Thanks to IIL’s one-to-one iPad programme, throughout the year, students and teachers regularly produce work using the specific applications used for this project: collaborative writing platforms and video editing. A wide range of additional technologies become available, bringing with them a multitude of educational opportunities and benefits.

The students’ final, printed productions of their stories were presented to parents just before Christmas.

The project was so successful that live-reading performances of the stories have also taken place.

The team of primary teachers are already preparing their next digital project, which you will soon to be able to read about on the IIL blog.

You can download the collection of stories in digital format:

• format pdf : requires Google Drive to download
• format iBook (iOS) :  requires Dropbox application to download
• format ePub (Android et Windows) :requires Dropbox application to download

The animations below are some examples of the work produced:

The Bear without a Family

A Thief’s Christmas

Fly to Rio

Contact :

c.duret(at)iil.ch