Meridian Stories offers teachers and students the opportunity to creatively develop and produce short digital stories about core curricula in Language Arts, History and STEAM. Founded in 2011, Meridian Stories is one vital solution to the problem of how to integrate the wonders and complexities of digital literacy into the classroom. For students, the digital realm is their library. It’s their communication platform. It’s their social life. It’s their source of knowledge. It’s their language. It’s a full-blown communication spectrum the breadth and depth of which is unprecedented in history.
How do we best prepare our kids to be meaningful contributors to this digitally literate universe in order to succeed post formal education?
Meridian Stories is part of the answer.
Offerings
Meridian Stories, designed for 5th – 12th graders, delivers three different pathways to engaged learning:
- The Meridian Library of Projects – Featuring 150 creative media-based projects in Language Arts, History and STEAM. Each project is a two – four week curricular journey for student teams.
- The Meridian Competitions – Featuring 15 media-based competitions every year (due in the spring) that invite mentored scoring and feedback, and reward winning teams with Digital Badges in Content, Storytelling and Media Mastery.
- The Meridian Media Resources Center – Featuring over 50 videos and print-outs that provide support around topics like Digital Citizenship and Creative Brainstorming, Game Design and Documentary Filmmaking.
Majority of assets aligned with the US-based Common Core, C3 Framework and Next Generation Science Standards
EDUCATIONAL BELIEF SYSTEM
Meridian Stories believes that:
- …Student Engagement is a necessary condition before any learning can take place. What are the conditions for student engagement? Fun, ownership, teamwork and working in the digital realm.
- …Digital Literacy is as important as textual literacy. If students are taking in the majority of their information digitally, then they need to learn to communicate substantive content digitally as well. Here’s the other thing: digital literacy is a naturally iterative Students keep shooting and editing, and shooting and editing, until they get it just right.
- …Creativity, Collaboration, and Critical Thinking are skills that hold equal value with the curricular content that teachers have to teach, and students have to learn. These 21st century skills are widely understood to be the most desired skills in the workplace.
- …Project-Based Learning yields the deepest learning experience for students. This is because the more invested you become in a project, the greater the opportunity for a) 21st century skills to be integrated into the learning and; b) curricular content to reveal its layers of complexity.
- …Storytelling is one of the most important pathways for understanding curricular content. Why? Because stories make meaning of our experience.
Check out the 2022-2023 Competitions
STEAM
Free Sample Projects
Consortia Pricing and Ordering Instructions
Vita-Learn schools receive 10% discounts on annual subscriptions and professional development. Orders are placed directly with Meridian Stories. To receive the Vita-Learn discount, use coupon code: VitaVermont! during registration.
All Project Library Digital Storytelling Challenges
Annual Subscription-
Language Arts. STEAM, and History Projects to choose from
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Over 130 Projects
2022-2023 Competitions
Annual Subscription-
5 Language Arts Competitions
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5 STEAM Competitions
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5 History Competitions
All Access (2022-23 Season)
Competitions + Project Library-
Includes 2022-23 Competitions
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Includes the All Project Library
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Standards Aligned
Professional Development Workshops for Vita-Learn schools receive 10% off. Contact Meridian Stories for a Quote and to discuss options.
Check Out the Book
Brett Pierce, the Founder and Executive Director of Meridian Stories, puts digital storytelling into your hands in his new book from Heinemann, Expanding Literacy: Bringing Digital Storytelling into Your Classroom.
How can we make meaningful, thoughtful digital storytelling a standard, best practice in schools? Expanding Literacy offers a specific project-based learning angle that can be meshed with any traditional and non-traditional curricular topic and is flexible enough to be applied to almost any content area.
