Guiding Questions: What tools do you think you will have to work with? What would you like to have that you don't?
In my school district, we are currently “tools rich” but “experience poor.” For several years, we had a teacher in one of our small schools who was REALLY into film making with students. He wrote some grants and ended up providing students with high-end video cameras, boom microphones, and a classroom in which one full corner was converted to a green screen recording area (complete with small stage, also painted green); a sound booth was built in a corner of the computer lab with a high-end microphone and sound board. The students who worked with that teacher (including all three of my own children) had amazing opportunities to learn how to use the equipment. However, when the teacher left, the equipment stayed but no one else on staff had the training or passion for digital storytelling and film making to carry on. So…that school has everything one would need to make a feature film but not a single teacher with the know-how or desire to put it to use. A few have been interested, but they have opened some of the Adobe Creative Suite tools and panicked ... and all of the students who were in the classes that used the tools have graduated, so there goes the "ask a kid to teach you" option. Another of our schools, just up the road, also has tons of tools, but they spend a lot of time taking up space and collecting dust: a HUGE portable green screen set up with fancy lights, high-end digital cameras, amazing software, a portable sound studio donated by our local public radio station … tons of stuff, but again, folks lack training to use the equipment and the “fire in the belly” for digital storytelling isn’t there. Honestly, I can’t think of a single tool that we do NOT have access to in my district that I wish we had. More than anything, I wish we had hands-on training as a district-wide staff (or least for those who are interested in learning how to use the tools), and then some ever-elusive TIME to practice ourselves…and then time to put what we learn to work in the classrooms. So, here's the epiphany I had during the course of Section III. Perhaps the reason we aren’t using the tools available to us is because we are simply too focused on the tools! (Duh?!) I began reading this section of the text thinking it would provide fairly specific information about the tools themselves (even though Jason says early on that he wouldn’t). The section title itself (“Going Digital”) had me dialed in for a few chapters of how-to specific to the digital tools. I kept reading…and reading…and reading…and realized how secondary the particular tools really are to the DST process. Perhaps we have actually been kind of UNfortunate in my district to have had such luck in obtaining complicated high-end stuff. The complexity of the tools has turned people off and made them afraid of trying to tell digital stories…because they think they won’t be able to figure out how to use sound board or the boom mics or the madness that is Adobe After Effects. Where we SHOULD begin, I guess, is with some good old-fashioned learning about the storytelling process…all of the phases that come before anyone touches the digital tool required to put it all together. We could begin with the “Making a Cake, Basic Process” idea (p. 175). We have several sets of iPads that could be used instead of trying to master the fancy cameras. The free software on students’ laptops or a basic iPad app could be great starting points instead of feeling like we need to START with something in the Adobe Suite. I started this class with some immediate angst about how it would require that I learn to use the complicated “stuff”…but, thankfully, after reading the entire text, I get it: A good story isn’t about the tools; it really is about the story. Reference: Ohler, J. (2013). Digital Storytelling in the Classroom: New Media Pathways to Literacy, Learning, and Creativity. Second Edition. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin. Guiding Question: After reading Part II of Digital Storytelling (Ohler, 2013), how would you define story? More importantly, how can you use "story" as an educator?
Part II of the text, like Part I, included so many memorable lines:
So, what is story? It’s all of these things, I guess. It’s the way we, as human beings, communicate…even when we don’t mean to; even when we aren’t aware. We may not set out to tell a story, but it’s rare that story doesn’t make its way into our interactions with others. I consider some of the most boring, seemingly pointless meetings I have attended, including some of the longest PowerPoint presentations in the history of mankind: Even in these settings, story has made its way into the mix. I serve as the District Test Coordinator for my small school district, and the many two or three day trainings I have attended have hardly been “story worthy.” However, at each of these, there are stories. DTCs share stories of testing fiascos; EED folks tell tales of boxes of SBA materials falling out of small planes and “secure” materials being left on district office doorsteps late on a Friday, only to be covered by a foot of snow when D.O. personnel arrive on Monday morning. The content on the PowerPoint slides is not worthy of comment, but the stories that illustrate the rules and regulations and requirements help me remember. Last fall, I was thrilled when our small local telephone cooperative advertised the availability of the Samsung Galaxy 5. I put my name on the list and was among the first in the area to possess the nifty device. Once connected to my Google account, I couldn’t get over all of the “stuff” the phone automatically did for me. One of the most amazing was (and still is) the way the technology creates stories for me. In fact, it creates stories with the photographs I take…and I don’t even realize there is a story there until my phone “dings” and tells me there is a new “story” ready for me to view. “Weekend in Fairbanks,” or “Trip to Palm Springs,” or “Wednesday Night in Willow Creek” … the technology even gives the story a name (which I can change, of course, thanks to the ease of use in editing and personalizing each story). There’s a map to illustrate each place I have traveled (thanks to GPS built into the device), a calendar identifying the date and which day of the trip is represented (January 26: Monday. Day 10), and then the magic behind Google selects photos for me (including videos), and places them in a pleasing, artsy layout that’s ready for me to swipe through, and edit as I please (“Select Moments,” it tells me as it displays all of the photos taken at each location, each identified by name via GPS locating technology). Some of the photos have even been enhanced via Google’s “Auto Awesomeness” technology…so a simple photo I snap with my phone of a moose, an arrangement of flowers, or my parents’ barn on a recent trip to Minnesota, suddenly becomes a stunning work of art thanks to filters, automatically applied, that make the photo look like an oil painting, a charcoal sketch, or a watercolor. Forgive me if this is all old news. Each and every time "A new story is waiting for you" appears on my phone notifications, I am in awe. I can’t believe I live at a point in history where this kind of technology is available, period. More so, I can’t believe I’m so fortunate as to exist at a point in time where telling our stories has become so much a part of life that new media helps to do this for us, as if we're so busy just "being" that we can't be bothered with recording the stories of our lives. BUT, danger exists in the technology, as well. “If we don’t create our own stories, someone else will do it for us” (p. 134). New media makes telling stories easier…and more challenging. Technology can now take control of our moments and parse and piece them into stories that we may or may not want to tell. Or, the “Auto Awesomeness” may not be awesome as it seems if we let it take control instead of serving as a tool to illustrate a story that begins in our minds, on sheets of blank paper as we map the stories need telling with arcs, maps, tables, quests, treasure maps, adventure diagrams, whatever. As noted in the text, story can be personal, academic, instructional, reflective, entertaining, and more. Stories are built on and reveal transformation. "Students come to school already understanding the story form and expect to find it in use” (Egan, cited by Ohler, p. 100). Students learn about stories in school, but imagine the powerful shift they would experience if school became a series of transformational, story-making events. Pretty cool. References: Ohler, J. (2013). Digital Storytelling in the Classroom: New Media Pathways to Literacy, Learning, and Creativity. Second Edition. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin. Guiding Question: Of the 20 Revelations about Digital Storytelling identified in Digital Storytelling in the Classroom (Ohler, 2013), which one speaks most deeply to you and why? Feel free to identify and discuss more than one.
While several of the Revelations resonate with me, two of them strike me square in the gut: Revelation #12: "Students need to become heroes of their own learning stories as well as of the stories they tell with their own lives." I agree that stories are essential to our survival and our well-being. I cannot count the number of times over the course of my 20 years as an educator that a student was upset, out of control, frustrated, whatever: When they were provided an opportunity to articulate why -- either in a conversation, a conference, an essay, a poem, or an angry outburst -- a story was revealed, and the student felt better. Something was released in the telling, and their behavior changed. Sometimes the telling of the story resulted in tears, other times in laughter, other times still it created even more frustration. No matter, though: The telling mattered and changed them. The section in the text about how "Stories Help Us Survive" (pgs. 9-10) prompted plenty of underlining and margin notes for me. I love this thought, in particular: "Stories allow us to take snippets of life and put them together in ways that make it possible for us to learn and remember new things. They give communities coherence and our lives meaning. They make order out of what would otherwise be the ongoing chaos of life and help each of us create a sense of personal identity..." (p. 9). From the same section of the text, and similar in theme is Revelation #13: "Stories help us remember." I spent several summers leading summer institutes for the Alaska State Writing Consortium. During those multi-week gatherings of teachers from across the state, we would write (and write and write and write). Every single time, I was struck by how much all of us would remember as a result of the writing...as a result of the story-telling. Whether they were stories about our lives as educators, childhood tales, poems about lost loves, or philosophical rants about what is good and bad in the world, the very act of telling a story would help us to remember. I had to pause a number of times while reading Section One of the text because the emphasis on story, in general, would pull me sideways into memories of so many different things. Thoughts of old black and white photographs of my grandparents would derail my focus when reading sections related to the selection and use of images in a digital story; flashes of my children's elementary school artwork came to mind as I read of Hannah's digital story about the fox; Canon in D drifted into my memory while reading comments about the power of music in a digital story...or the impact of the lack of music, in other cases. Stories do help us remember, and the very act of reading about stories took me forever because it caused me to remember so much. Without a doubt, a favorite line from the sections detailing the 20 Revelations was this one: "One of the most powerful stories a teacher can have students tell is the story of their future selves, in which they become heroes of the lives they want to live" (p. 10). Reference: Ohler, J. (2013). Digital Storytelling in the Classroom: New Media Pathways to Literacy, Learning, and Creativity. Second Edition. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin. An example from Center for Digital Storytelling. Hold on... |
AuthorTammy Van Wyhe: rural Alaskan educator, leader, learner, writer. Archives
March 2015
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