Right now, at my internship for the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, I am storyboarding potential learning modules that will assist CFCH’s mission to become more of an educational tool. I have chosen Canva as the platform that will allow me to create storyboards. Ever since I took my summer class, Teaching and Learning in the Digital Age, I have used Canva as the medium in which I create lessons. As I am a middle school teacher, I use it to create my slideshows and sometimes even worksheets for my students. Fortunately, Canva is also good for storyboarding.  

Canva has allowed me to draft out dynamic web pages that will serve as the foundation for my learning modules. I used Canva’s blank template design for websites to draft out how users will find the learning modules and how the learning modules could appear on the site. I had to take many screenshots of the Folklife website as is and then I attempted to edit in text that would fit in within existing Folklife content. Once I was able to fit in navigation directions to where my “conceptualized” Folklife content would be I was finally able to start drafting out the types of lessons that could exist. 

My foundation for my learning modules relates back to the lesson plan template I created in October and an idea I had to create an introductory lesson for culture. I, along with my fellow intern, felt stuck on how to create educational tools for the concept of immigration. Immigration itself is a very big and complicated topic. It seemed even more complicated to base an entire project off of it. I came to the conclusion that it would be best to create a lesson that would introduce students to the concept of culture, especially since CFCH does not present a definition for culture on its site. So, what better way to fix this than to create something that would allow students to develop a better understanding for what Folklife magazine is all about?

My learning modules are laid out in webpages. These webpages feature instructions for both teachers and students as well as interactive activities that are downloadable. I am expecting to embed Canva slideshows and worksheets into these webpages for the purpose of accessibility. Additionally, in these learning modules, I have chosen to retool existing CFCH content by embedding them within the webpage and modifying them with guided reading questions students can answer. I even developed an idea to reuse the audience activities featured in Folklife Festival programs and adapt them into my learning modules. For the most part, I am improving my skills in storyboarding and educational resource creation through the use of educational technology.