Lights, Camera, Literacy: Multimedia Storytelling at Smith Elementary

Turning iPads into Portable Studios in Ms. Hiltz's Classroom

In Ms. Hiltz's second-grade class at Huntington Beach City School District’s (HBCSD) Smith Elementary, student iPads are being transformed into portable movie studios. This spring, Executive Director of Information Technology Mr. Chris Bell visited Ms. Hiltz's classroom to lead weekly collaborative sessions where students from multiple classrooms came together to learn the art of digital storytelling.

Chris Bell came to this work with a teacher's heart. Having started his career in the classroom, he brings both the perspective of an educator and the vision of a technologist to every school site he supports. Returning to that classroom energy and helping teachers and students explore new formats for learning together is exactly the kind of evolution HBCSD hoped to inspire when it reimagined what modern learning could look like. It also reflects the fifth focus area of the HBCSD Strategic Plan, Leadership Development, and what it looks like when leaders at every level model curiosity, innovation, and a willingness to grow alongside the people they serve.

In these sessions, young creators learn the fundamentals of scene composition, multimedia production, and collaborative creativity while bringing original ideas to life. By bringing students together, the program fosters a unique environment of peer-to-peer learning, where students develop leadership, confidence, and the resourcefulness at the core of the HBCSD Learner Profile. The result is something organic: organized creative energy, shared discovery, and students finding their voices in new ways.

Now in its second year at Smith, this Apple technology rollout is part of the District's broader technology update. Traditional learning formats still form the foundation of every student's school day, but projects like this one show what becomes possible when we also lean into the tools our District and community have prioritized: tools that are actively preparing students for tomorrow.

It's also a direct example of the District's first focus area, Academic Achievement, and its goal to help students reach their full potential through strong, engaging instruction. This work shows what it looks like to trust the process. Allowing for excitement and curiosity isn't a detour from learning, but rather an invitation for students to explore their creativity, exercise different modalities for capturing and expressing information, and discover that technology is not just a device but a tool for sharing who they are.