Digital Storytelling: Enhancing Language, Visual, and Media Literacies
MRA 2009 Presentation
Ledong Li, Tingfeng Luo, Wen Wu, Fan Zhang, Oakland University
What’s Your Story?
Stories Surround Us
What is digital storytelling?
Daniel Meadows: “short personal multimedia tales told from the heart”
Educational Use of Digital Storytelling
Focus on specific topic and contain a particular point of view
Topics range from personal tales recounting historical events, exploring life in one’s own community, to the search for life in other corners of the universe
They can vary in length, but in education they typically last between 2-10 minutes
Procedure
Write script
Collect assets
Create storyboard
Draft, edit, and finalize
Publish it as a movie file
Hardware
Computer
External hard drive/flash drive
Headset with microphone
Scanner
Digital Camera/Digital Video Camera
Facilities with access to internet
Software
Movie Tools: Flash, Premiere, Photostory, Movie Maker, iMovie
Storytelling has been important to individuals since the early days of civilization
In education, storytelling remains a way to teach subtle points and make elusive abstractions concrete
With the latest development of computers, multimedia systems, and the Internet, “images, sounds, animations, and video clips” can be brought together with “texts,” providing a wide range of story formats
Viewed through: Web browser to Browsers, RSS Readers, phones
Architecture: Client server to web services
Content created by: Web coders to everyone
Domain of: Geeks to “mass amateurization”
What does this mean for learning?
Obvious answers
New technologies and tools
Different workflow processes
Competition and expectations of end users
Less obvious answers
New expectations for the relationship between learners and instructors
New modes of writing and communication
New literacies
Web 2.0 to Literacy 2.0
Web 2.0 – business model focused on a service rather than product that values participation, collaboration, and distribution
Literacy 2.0 – students are appropriating digital applications, networks, and services; they are developing new ways of reading, writing, viewing, listening, and recording — new ways that embody this 2.0 environment
Literacy 2.0 necessarily involves extensive participation, collaboration, and distribution of expertise and intelligence
Purpose of our Study
Engaging graduate students (in-service teachers) and undergraduates (pre-service teachers) in how to make digital stories
Examine the potential of digital storytelling used to enhance traditional and new literacies
Bridging literacy methods, changing perspectives, how to inform instruction
Roles that participants played
Writers
Text editors
Visual designers
Image editors
Voice recording specialists
Audio editing
Movie producers
Impacts on education
Practical and learner-centered
Meets ed tech standards
Enhances literacies: language, visual, media
Helps build useful skills in web 2.0/literacy 2.0: participation, collaboration, distribution
Apologies in advance for what will be a long post here, as my “reflection in action” during the conference consisted more of trying to find free wifi and navigating the Riverwalk than it did of actually having time to sit down and think. I tried to break my thinking up by day, for what that’s worth, and hope that these thoughts are useful for all my readers, especially all my colleagues who were unable to attend.
That said, NWP/NCTE2008 was a wonderful week of connecting and collaborating with colleagues, and there is so much to think about it is hard to know where to begin. So, I will organize it by day.
One thing that I will note here and throughout the rest of this post is that I sensed a definite shift, a change in the tone about how people are talking about newer literacies and technologies. In a sense, it is as if we no longer had to begin every conversation, every presentation with a disclaimer: “let me tell you why I use technology in my teaching of writing.” Instead, the conversations simply began with the premise that we simply are using technology to teach writing.
And that is darn cool.
Now for a summary of the week.
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Wednesday brought me in early to work on a book project with NWP, and we had some great discussions about the state of digital writing as well as the Letters to the President Project. Having been in the process of interviewing a number of educators this fall, getting this day to work with Danielle and then meet with Elyse
and Christina from NWP brought some clarity to my thinking (something that has been sorely lacking as I have been digging through loads and loads of data). I feel very confident in the work that we did and that the book will be useful for educators in a variety of contexts.
I was able to interview someone from Google about the use of Google Docs in education, and that conversation (among the many I have had with NWP colleagues) reminds me that things are definitely changing. Yes, there are still issues of access and the digital divide. Yet, I think that students and teachers are finding more and more opportunities for thinking about how to teach digital writing because the tools are (almost) all online and (almost) all free. Not to go overboard on the idea of the conference theme, but I could finally see the revolution in action over the course of this weekend. Teachers are beginning, across the board, to make the shift.
Thursday, November 20, 2008
On Thursday, the NWP Annual Meeting kicked off and, for me at least, the best part of the day was the new site meeting. I enjoyed the Writing in a Digital Age session, but then got caught up in other things all afternoon, in particular some great news… Last week, on my birthday, I was pleased to learn from NWP’s Executive Director that Central Michigan University had been awarded an NWP site! Thus, this was my first official meeting as a new site director. When asked how I was feeling, all weekend long I repeated the “excited, but terrified” mantra. Attending the NWP Annual Meeting as a site director was a new experience, and again I was amazed at the ways in which technology and writing were simply a part of the same conversation now. As I begin to think about how to frame the work of our new site, I am encouraged by
the fact that being digital will be a major part of who we are. A talk with Bud Hunt later in the weekend reaffirmed this belief that our site should intertwine our web presence with our core work, and I look forward to tackling that when I get home.
Also, another cool aspect of Thursday was that I was interviewed by Paul and a crew from the Pearson Foundation about how writing is changing in a digital age. They were getting interview with a large number of TCs throughout the annual meeting, and I can’t wait to see how the videos they will be producing turn out.
Here are some of my thoughts from my preparations for that interview:
Why is writing important now?
As it has always been, writing remains a key mode of communication. It is important today because writers in a variety of personal and professional roles are being asked to produce a greater variety of texts, for a greater variety of audiences.While many teachers — especially those involved with NWP initiatives — continue to build on the principles of good writing instruction, we need to continue our efforts and supporting the teaching and learning of writing in all of our classrooms, K-12, and across content areas. As writers adapt to new situations for composing texts, they need to be adept in a variety of writing skills and genres.We, as educators, are the ones who introduce them to these skills and genres when we keep our attention on teaching writing with intention.
Writing in a technological world means what?
In an increasingly networked world, writers need to adapt to different purposes, audiences, and contexts for writing that have been enabled by newer technologies. This also involves a shift in how we think about who writers are, how texts are produced, and where texts are distributed.
Regardless of how “digital” we think our students are — and, no doubt, most of them are more adept at particular digital skills like using Facebook, Twitter, or text messaging, they do not necessarily come to those tasks with the capacities that make them critical and creative digital writers. Not only do they need to understand the technical aspects of creating hyperlinks, posting to a blog, or collaborating with a wiki, but they need to have the intentional focus as a writer to understand the audience and purpose for which they are writing. Who reads your Facebook updates and why? Can you write to that audience in the same manner as a you can when you produce an academic paper, even if it is posted on a blog?
Moreover, they need to consider the ways in which we can compose with multiple modes and media. For instance, one can argue a position through a traditional essay, a 30 second public service announcement (either an audio or video), or in the form of a single-page advertisement with an image and few words, or no words at all. Understanding when, why, and how to use different forms of media to convey a particular message requires a working knowledge of the mode — that is, what does an audience expect in order to be persuaded — and how to effectively manipulate the media.
So, writing has always been a complex act, and newer technologies offer writers numerous opportunities to get their message across. Writing in a technological world means that we, as writers and teachers of writing, need to be aware of these choices and how we can best utilize them to have the intended effect on our various audiences.
One disappointment… no more Tech Matters. That institute, more than anything else I have done, has shaped my thinking on teaching digital writing. I will miss it dearly, but understand the choice that was made to go to a more site-focused technology retreat. So, while I am sad to know that Tech Matters is no more, I am encouraged by the work that is happening across the NWP network related to digital writing. There are some promising things on the horizon, one of which I hope becomes this book project.
Thursday night ended with our traditional RCWP dinner. Janet thanked all of us and praised our new site, but I want to say thank you, Janet, both for dinner and for all that you have done to enable teacher leaders to fill entire tables at an annual meeting, reflecting on a year of shared work.
Friday, November 21, 2008
Friday brought breakfast with a friend I hadn’t seen in some time as well as the invitation to be interviewed for NCTE’s Centennial film being produced by John Golden and his colleagues. Wow, what an incredible honor to be invited into that work. He asked me to reflect on how the teaching of writing has changed over the past few years with the advent of Web 2.0. What an honor and a wonderful opportunity. In preparation for that interview, I wrote the following:
The read/write web has finally delivered the promise of having a real audience and varied purposes that writing teachers have so long looked to bring to their classrooms. From the beginning of the process writing movement, when Emig first looked at the composing process and Sommers identified revision strategies of experienced and novice writers, teacher researchers such as Murray, Graves, Calkins, Atwell, Ray, Fletcher, Portalupi, and others have been trying to invite student writers to see audiences and purposes beyond the classroom and traditional school genres. While this began to occur in the 80s, 90s, and early 2000’s, there was still something “fake” about this writing. Yes, it was shared with peers in class. Yes, it was read at author’s chair or published in a school anthology. Yes, it went home and made it on the fridge. And, if it was lucky, that student writing made it to a local newspaper or other venue for publication. When the internet really hit big at the turn of the 21st century, writing teachers felt as if they could have a purpose and audience beyond the classroom and school. Some were able to publish their writing online, but things got in the way: FTP, limited or no access to the server, passwords, firewalls, as well as the onerous HTML editors. The promise of the web was to democratize information, and it did — if you could figure out how to create web pages and uploaded them. Even discussion forums — with all their ability to post and respond to writing — hit the scene, there was still something impersonal and difficult about “publishing” one’s writing.
Then, when read/write web tools such as blogs and wikis emerged, and “push button publishing” become possible for anyone, anywhere. Along with the increased bandwidth and access to internet-enabled computers in schools, the ability to post and share writing on a blog was revolutionary. Finally, the goal of “publishing” work for an authentic audience and purpose emerged as a goal for writers, both in and out of school. No longer did a writer need to know HTML (although it helped),
or have a specified program on his or her computer. We could write (and publish our writing) any time, any where.
This has resulted in a shift in thinking that Knobel and Lankshear discuss in their work on New Literacies. In a nutshell, the traditional vision that we have of a single writer, working alone on a piece of writing that has been culled together from a series of authoritative sources has been replaced with one of a collaborator who is able to build on the ideas of others, and participate in what boyd calls
“networked publics.” We can access our documents any time and any where that has a network connection, including on handheld devices and mobile phones.
What this means is that — in addition to being able to write in multiple modalities and media — students must be made aware of the ways in which their writing is distributed and perceived across the many networks in which they participate. What this means for teachers — and NCTE — is that we need to consider the many ways in which students see themselves as writers (and, according to the Pew report sometimes do not see themselves as writers) and invite them to be intentional about how they read and write in a digital age.
We have learned a great deal about revision and how audience and purpose can lead to intentional writing. NCTE should continue to support scholarship and professional development that builds on the principles and research findings that we have, noting the ways in which we as teachers can guide “digital natives” who may know how to send a “tweet,” but may not always be thinking about the ways such a message can be interpreted. In short, we need to continue the professional conversations that we have been having about writing and revision over the past three decades, taking what we know about these processes and moving them into the era of the read/write web.
NCTE continues to move in the right direction. In just the past year, they have adopted the statement on teaching multimodal literacies, and released two research and policy briefs (one specifically on 21st century literacies and the “Writing Now” brief that encompasses a broader view of the composing process). By offering the summer institute on 21st century literacies, webinars, and the “Tech to Go” sessions at the conference this year, NCTE keeps moving ahead with this work in practical manners. The website redesign and Inbox blog offer good examples of how NCTE is trying to stay in touch with members.
Doing that interview really helped me articulate my thinking, and I appreciate the opportunity to have done it.
Friday morning brought me to my first presentation with some NWP colleagues, “Revising the Writing Process: New Literacies in the English Classroom.” Paul Allison, Chris Sloan, Aram Kabodian, and Dawn Reed were able to present their work related to blogging, podcasting, digital storytelling, and social networking to a crowd of over 100 (don’t believe me — check out the pictures below!). I won’t go into detail on the session, as we have all our materials on our wiki, but suffice it to say that the work these four shared is both amazing and timely. Participants left with only a tiny handout — a bookmark with our URL on it — but loads and loads of ideas. I think that my friend and Project WRITE colleague Liz Webb recorded the session as a podcast, and I will try to get a link to it.
Friday dinner brought together friends and alums from MSU, packing a restaurant. A few of us ended up in the Italian place next door when the tables overflowed. Despite missing the conversation with the large group, it was great to spend time with so many people who have ties to the green and white, even if just for a short while.
Saturday, November 22, 2008
Saturday brought a meeting with my editor on another book project, on that I will be very excited to return to as the semester comes to a close and hopefully involve some Project WRITE teachers (as well as their students). Then I was off to present at my Tech To Go kiosk for “RSS Feeds and Teaching English.” Again, more of the work of that session can be found on my wiki, so I want to reflect for a moment on the process of presenting that session (thanks to Bud Hunt for the photo).
My thoughts on the Tech To Go session are mixed, but all in a good way. On the one hand, I wanted to have it be a little more formal with a larger screen and some chairs, so people would feel free to linger. On the other hand, that was precisely the point. People were able to move around, or just stop by is something caught their eye. Having to
reexplain RSS got a little repetitive over the course of the hour and fifteen minutes, but I think that people walked away from the session — no matter how long they stayed — having just enough info to go back and try things out. I hope my wiki page helps them do PD in their own school. As for the Tech To Go Sessions, ideally, I would like to see
them working there with computers in front of them, so they could try it out at the moment. Yet, perhaps there is some value in getting these micro bursts of information about newer literacies and technologies. I
will be interested to see how the conference evaluations reflect people’s experiences with these Tech To Go sessions and to think about how we can shape them for next year.
After browsing books, I was fortunate enough to see Barry Lane heading towards his room with all his gear in tow. After offering a hand to help, and having a quick discussion about when we met in October at the MCTE conference, we were able to walk and talk on the way to his session room. He remembered our conversation in October, reminded me that I needed to send him the podcast (which I finally was able to do
today!), and offered me one of his CDs for helping. When we got to the room with time to spare, he asked if he could interview me for his YouTube channel. I encourage you to watch the video with Corbett Harrison instead!
Video Added 12/5/08
Then, was time for me to sit. Whew…. A session presented by Bill Bass, Melissa Lynn Pomerantz, and Debra Solomon Baker from St. Louis on “Extensions: Using Technology to Extend the English Classroom.” The three of them talked about how they used participatory tools in their classroom, including the use of audio recordings embedded in word docs to give students feedback, a variety of formats for discussion forums, and how to organize your personalized professional development with RSS feeds. It was good to hear Melissa and Debra in particular talk about how very simple uses of technology were having such a profound effect on their teaching.
Later in the afternoon, as PSU was crushing MSU, I was able to ignore the pain of the game by thinking about my third session, “Why Should We Write with a Wiki? Professional Development and the Read/Write Web.” Working with Mary Sawyer and Tim Dewar to frame a session on how pre-service and in-service teachers perceive literacies, I was able to share some of the work of Project WRITE and how teachers engaged in professional learning and collaboration with a wiki. In talking with the two of them, as well as other participants in the session, we were all able to enjoy a thoughtful and engaging close to Saturday. While
Anne Whitney’s Nittany Lions whipped on my Spartans, at least we were able to have a good conversation about how teachers learn digital literacies and we talked about how to continue supporting graduate students in the NWP network.
Saturday night brought a trip down to the San Antonio Market District, and fun night of conversation with RCWP colleagues.
Nacho libre anyone?
Sunday, November 23, 2008
Wow… A “down” day in that I had no presentations to do. Instead, I was able to meet with some colleagues throughout the day to discuss some projects as well as catch a few sessions. One of the more interesting
ones was a panel of British scholars — Julie Blake, Tom Rank, and Tim Shortis — who talked about their work with digitizing texts in the British Library, teaching 21st century literacies to teachers, and understanding the role of txting in our language. All were thought provoking and helped me consider the many ways in which as the nature of literacy continues to change, the ways that we frame the discussions about the change matter as much — if not more — than the changes themselves. The idea that sticks with me most is that we, as educators, can help provide context, in a variety of ways, to the vast bits of knowledge that are out there. The project that the British Library is undertaking to organize and contextualize the texts in their collection is simply mind-blowing.
Also, Kathy Yancey delivered another outstanding address that suggested we reframe the teaching of writing. I can’t even try to capture everything she said, but it was great stuff.
Monday, November 24, 2008
Final day. ACE Workshop. As it has been the past two years, lots of fun to talk with teachers about the use of read/write web tools in the classroom. As always, the sessions were fast-paced and I again talked
about Writing with Wikis. We had fun overwriting each other in Wikispaces, yet it seemed like most participants walked away with some ideas about why and how to use wikis in their classroom. Before we had
to go to lunch, Allen Webb shared his new website, Lit Archives, and talked about a number of ways to engage students in classic literature by harnessing digital versions of those texts and inviting them into virtual worlds.
After eating with my friend Carl Young, I had to catch a cab back to the airport. Finally able to get on wifi for free, I tried to write this blog post but (as you can imagine) ran out of time after checking email and talking with my Michigan colleagues who were about to hop on the plane with me.
So, NWP/NCTE 2008 comes to a close with me writing the bulk of this post (novella?) on the plane heading home towards Detroit. Of all the things that I didn’t do, I feel bad that I didn’t keep up with Twitter via SMS all weekend, as Andrea worked very hard to get that as our networking tool for the weekend. And I missed a lot. A lot. I look forward to reading everyone else’s reflections.
Yet, it was still a good conference. And the talk about technology and newer literacies filled most of the conference presentations and hallway conversations, implicitly or explicitly. I was able to help highlight the work of my colleagues and friends, some who were able to be at the conference and others who were not.
For as much as I did, as many new people as I met and those who I became reacquainted with, I have to say that I am tired. Not looking forward to shoveling snow, although I am looking forward to seeing my kids, my friends, and my family over the holiday weekend.
Happy Thanksgiving to all my students, friends, and colleagues reading this. Thanks for sticking through this post and sharing these reflections, as well as the entire conference, with me.
See you next year in Philly, hopefully with a crew of teachers from our new writing project site.
Earlier this summer, Allen Webb and Robert Rozema published their text through Heinemann, Literature and the Web: Reading and Responding with New Technologies. I received a copy as a gift, and just got a chance to read it over Labor Day. Besides thanking the two of them for mentioning my blog in the book, I also want to compliment them on the way that they approach the task of teaching with technology.
The text makes the idea of using technology very approachable because they maintain a consistent thread through the entire text, one that focuses on how we ask students to respond to literature and how technology can support that response. So, beginning in the introduction, they ground their discussion of how to use technology in principles that guide good response to literature:
Entering the story world
Close reading
Understanding social, cultural, and historical contexts
Responding to the text
Throughout the text, they return to these main principles and discuss how teachers can use newer technologies to support these types of reading responses. This approach encourages me to continue thinking about how to ground discussions of technology and newer literacies in larger discussions of pedagogy, and not vice versa. As teachers design units of study and connect them to state standards, the text boxes in each chapter will help them connect back to these principles of reading response. The projects that they describe in the text all seem very doable, although I do wonder if some readers of the text will want more step-by-step instructions.
One technology that I wonder more about — as a response to literature — is digital storytelling. While I don’t fault them for not covering that topic in the text, as Rozema does a great job of discussing how he invites his students to create podcasts in response to literature as one form of multimedia, it is a question that I have more and more. What is digital storytelling? Is it a personal narrative, or can we call other forms of digital video production “digital storytelling? That is, if it is non-fiction, or a response to literature, does it count as a digital story? Or, does it matter so long as kids are engaged? Could his podcasting project be adapted (relatively) easily to digital storytelling? Also, what are the copyright implications when remixing chunks of literature already present on the web, such as in Project Gutenberg?
That side note notwithstanding, the text is sharp and full of examples. My favorite chapter comes in the conclusion, where Webb and Rozema discuss how to become a “web advocate.” “[B]eing a web advocate,” they argue, “means mentoring those around you.” I couldn’t agree more, and I look forward to learning more from the two of them, as they have been mentoring me for years. It is great to see their thinking captured in this text, so they can mentor others as well.
Today marked the end of our Project WRITE summer institute, and there were both smiles and tears to be found amongst the many of us who shared our writing this morning and our professional learning this afternoon. My partner, project leader Liz Webb, structured an amazing week, given all that we had to do from evaluating student work to preparing a lesson or series of lessons for the school year and sharing a piece of personal writing. Each morning began with one of her writing starts, and the teachers are working together to produce a book through lulu.com. Then, we would spend some time evaluating student work with the NWP’s analytic writing continuum, and have time for professional reading groups. Finally, I would introduce a short tech topic each afternoon (digital storytelling, Zotero, and SlideShare, respectively) and teachers had the option to continue working on the new technology, or work on their own curriculum plan.
Needless to say, this semi-structured playtime offered a number of teachers who have felt hesitant, if not a bit resistant, to technology all year the opportunity to create some amazing products. I am impressed with the scope of the lessons as well as the ways in which teachers integrated technology, in small and large ways. A few of the key lessons that came out this week:
Continuing to differentiate between a blog and a wiki, as well as the purposes for them. Some teachers were finally able to really absorb Edublogs, digging into the overall design of their site, working with widgets, and figuring out categories for organization. Others wanted to stick with wikis, which worked out well, too, to talk about the overall design and organization of a site. In each case, we talked about purpose and audience, considering who would be doing the most posting, commenting, and reading, and making decisions from there.
Digital storytelling catches like wildfire. Always. I introduced it on Monday, beleiving that it might be the straw that broke the camel’s back. Instead, a number of teachers took to it. This raised (and continues to raise) a series of questions for us about fair use, copyright law, Creative Commons, and how to invite students to build on, cite, and ethically use the work of others. We discussed how some uses may be fair within your classroom walls, but how posting to YouTube made it a whole different game. Suddenly, many teachers this week became hyper aware of this, and I think that it will be an interesting thread that continues into our fall PD.
Finally, having time, time, time. We were supposed to have this week of intro last summer. For a variety of reasons, we didn’t. And, while I don’t regret the work that we have done or the many successes that we have had, I do wonder what we might have been able to accomplish over the school year if we had been able to kick off last summer with an entire week of work like this. Ah… a lesson for a future PD experience.
All in all, we enjoyed our time together, minus the extreme heat in Brody Hall. I think that a number of the teacher grew in leaps and bounds, and we all grew in some way or another. I was very impressed with the transparency of technology today in our final read around, where a digital recorder was passed from person to person, pages were brought up on the wiki, and images were shown to complement the work being read. And, we hardly had a hiccup.
So, thanks to everyone in Project WRITE for a great week. We are looking forward to getting the data from your students plugged into our spreadsheet so we can see, statistically, if there was growth in your writers above and beyond what we would have normally expected. The professional learning was a critical part of this project, and now we need to see if we are “taking it to the kids.”
Story telling as an ancient tradition; digital storytelling integrates visual, interactive, and reiterative with constructive ideas
“combining the art of telling stories with some mixture of digital graphics, text, recorded audio narration, video…” B. Robin, 2006
Purpose of the Study
Outlines application of DS in pre-school and effects discovered on students’ learning (age 6)
Fall 2007, two pre-school classrooms with 28 students and 2 teachers total
Stories in pre-school
Great way of communication in classrooms
Teacher tells story, students “dial in” on the words
May use music and interaction
Story for this study
Story of the first president of the Turkish Republic
Used historical photo graphs, his recorded speech, songs he liked, etc.
Procedure
Pre-knowledge from students
Data gathered through classroom observation, teacher interviews, assessment of students’ drawings
Students drew a picture of the story and explained the drawings
Results
Students had a good understanding of the subject from the digital story
Although their drawings were simple, they were able to retell what they saw in the story
Only 3 of the 28 students couldn’t explain the main idea from the story
Teachers felt that the content was more understandable, were willing to create stories, agreed that it helped get across more content in a limited time, felt that they didn’t have time or technical knowledge
This week, I am at SITE 2008, preparing for a presentation on Project WRITE tomorrow. Today, I will try to blog from some of the sessions (as wifi will allow). Here are three sessions on digital storytelling that I attended this morning. (I will also cross-post on the Using Technology to Tell Stories Blog):
Pre- and post-surveys for teacher indicated interests in storytelling
The effective digital story:
Uses only a few images, a few words, and fewer special effects to powrfully communicate meaning
Flows naturally and is limited to 2-3 minutes
Is supported with effective teacher training
Focuses on the writing and communication proess rather than just digital effects
Is solidly grounded in curriculum and expresses relevant content knowledge (Question: what counts as curriculum? Is this only for expository reports of content?)
Goals of the project
Implement teacher training on effective and efficient methods of integrating digital video editing technology into the classroom
Enable students to creat enhancements to traditional written/oral assignments using digital storytelling
No more than 5 images by a single artist of 10% of a collection of images may be used from an internet or copyrighted source, if attributed
Design, Development, and Implementation
Curriculum Overview
In proceedings paper
Teachers
2 hour workshop using a whole group setting with guided practice and interactive group work
Printed materials with step-by-step guides
Learned on how to import, sequence, an editing music and images
Techniques on internet searchers, writing scripts, and storyboarding
Saving and rendering digital movies into condensed Quick Time format for presentation and evaluation
Student Project
Conducting valid research using the internet, books, and materials provided by the teachers (historical perspective on the Holocaust)
Writing a script and creating a storyboard of images and text
Went through same process of creating movies as teachers did
Learning how to cite sources and give proper attribution to collected images and music
Movies were presented in a whole group setting for peer review and teacher evaluation on content, flow, and impact of story
Evaluating the project
Images
Limit the amount of images that students collect to 10-15 images
Google search for large or extra large images only
Choice of images that can be scaled to correct size and aspect ration
Images should appear for at least 10 seconds
text should appear long enough to be read by audience
Images should appear alone long enough to convey impact and meaning
Narrative
Text narrative is often more efficient than audio narratives
Background noise can distract from the quality of the story
Use of audio equipment can take more time than can be practical
Effects
Simple fades and dissolves
Basic effect applications for motion
Use b/w or sepia tones for image color consistency
Music
Create own music
Get copyright free music
Conclusion
Effective stories captivate attention, use minimal special effects, and translate relevant content knowledge
They are a part of the curriculum and supported by effective teacher training
Enhance traditional forms of assessments
Reflections:
As I listened to this presentation, I was struck by the stark utilitarian vision of digital storytelling. In short, this seemed to be an enhanced version of writing the report that students have always been asked to do. By searching for images and creating, essentially, captions for them, then combining them into a very short movie, there is not much of the student represented here. When I think about digital storytelling, I think of the personal narrative or, at least, a much more personal take on an expository topic. This type of digital story would be easy to assess (10-15 images, appropriate captions with facts), which is not necessarily a good thing. The writing process is messy, and this is a sanitized version of digital storytelling.
Independent four-year institute of 2000 students, in NJ and near NYC
Introduction to Education
Gateway course for education majors, geared towards technology and is a hybrid course
Classroom management, multiple intelligences, lessong planning, inclusion, etc.
Self-reflection and life-long learning
Why digital storytelling?
Introduce new educational technology that students can use in their classroom
Introduce alternate way of self-expression
Create a wonderful addition to their ePortfolio
Make learning “fun”
Final assignment
“Your Own Journey of Learning” — create a movie that shows your learning this semester about issues in education
Research Questions
Will student choose digital storytelling as an option to express learning?
Whill it help them express themsleves fully?
Will it help them reflect on themselves more effectively?
Will the introdcution of DS not be helpul to our student, perhaps confusing them or making them feel less capable of themselves (not in the millennial generation, other side of the digital divide)?
Results
About half of the students choose to create digital stories and wanted to share them within and outside the class
Reflections:
This use of digital storytelling, too, was very functional, but did also show how teacher education students could compose their own stories (in particular, about learning how to teach). It was a different approach than the previous session, in that it discussed how students go through their own writing process to develop their own stories rather than reporting on other ideas. I am a bit concerned about the idea that this was done to be an “addition” to a portfolio or for “fun,” but I understand how that approach appeals to pre-service teachers. All in all, this idea could be a useful twist on the digital storytelling that I am asking students to do this year.
Paige is the Director of the Mobile Bay Writing Project and has been working with teachers at that site to develop digital stories
What is the difference between a digital story and power point? Bringing out the differences in genre and the ways that we think about using storytelling.
Reflections:
This was an intimate discussion with eight people, including Paige and Helen who have extensive experiences using digital storytelling. We wandered into discussions of the composing process, copyright, personal voice in narrative, uses of different digital storytelling tools, and other related ideas. Another link I forgot about: Educause’s 7 Things That You Should Know About Digital Storytelling.
This past week, I was invited to present an introductory workshop on digital storytelling to a group of teachers in Alpena. Minus some minor glitches in figuring out file management with brand new jump drives, the session went well from both my perspective and that of the attendees. Exit comments were generally positive and, since I will be working with this group again, the suggestions will be very helpful, too.
Yet, in the section of the evaluations that asked teachers to rank items such as the objectives of the workshop being met, the organization, and so forth, all the positive responses were overshadowed by one question that received unusually low marks: “The impact this inservice will have on my teaching will probably be…” Responses here were at least one point lower, on average, than every other category.
This struck me as interesting because, throughout the day, we had been having discussions about access in their schools: access to computer labs and equipment, access to certain websites (such as Flickr), and access to time for planning and implementing such a project. As I reviewed these lower scores, then, I saw them not so much as a reflection on the workshop itself as much a reflection on the school contexts to which these teachers would return the next day.
I write this here not to speculate on any particular way to solve this problem, since we know the digital divide is still evident in all of our work, even in the most well endowed schools. Yet, I found it interesting that a group of engaged professionals who found the process of digital storytelling valuable and wanted to do it with their students felt, at the end of the day, as if this wouldn’t necessarily impact their classrooms due to these issues.
Moreover, I shouldn’t sound bleak, because I know that enacting professional development in the classroom is a long term-process. I wouldn’t be doing this kind of work if I didn’t believe in sustainable change over time.
Yet, these evaluations were a concrete reminder of the very real challenges that even the most motivated teachers will face. This might explain why, at a school that has nearly unlimited technology resources, Patrick Welsh explains why teacher morale is so low. He states:
Of course, the big question isn’t whether teachers like spending their time learning one new gizmo after another, but whether a parade of new technologies will help kids learn. From what I can see, that’s not the case.
I disagree with Welsh’s final claim. What I see is that technologies can help kids learn, if teachers are able to think critically about how to use them.
Yet, even with the time for professional development, sustained inquiry, and collaboration, they walk back into their classrooms with incredible demands on their time and attention that may make digital writing and digital teaching difficult, if not impossible, for them.
Apart from the idea that we give teachers more time or get more computers, what this raises for me is the idea that we have to do to shift our professional focus from “using the tools” to “engaging in literacy practices,” and all the subsequent shifts in teaching and learning that will result.
The problem, then, is how to continue that conversation, while still addressing the day-to-day needs of teaching.
Last week, a number of RCWP teachers met to plan professional development for the 2007-08 school year. The meetings went well, as we discussed a number of issues about how and why we should be doing technology/writing PD and we all agreed that we needed to make the sessions compelling to teachers in terms of meeting real needs and stay focused on literacy practices, too.
To that end, the group came up with five topics that we will present over the course of the year, one each month from October through March. Here is a list of topics and the technologies that we will explore in each.
Why Technology? Exploring New Literacies (RSS and Overview of Read/Write Web)
Reading, Writing, and Researching Online (Searching, Evaluating, and Documenting with Social Bookmarking, Google Notebook, and Zotero)
Creating a Community of Writers Using Technology (Blogs, Wikis, Google Docs, EZines)
Free, Easy, and Legal Resources for Creating Content (Copyright, Fair Use, Creative Commons, Open Source)
Communicating Beyond the Classroom (Public and private spaces, Email rhetoric and groups, Flickr)
We are starting to post agendas on our wiki and look forward to hearing what you all think. In particular, do you think that:
We give a good survey of available technologies?
We move through the ideas in each workshop and over the series in a coherent manner?
Teachers would be willing to pay to come to these sessions (once a month on Thursdays, from 6:00 – 8:30 PM)?
Any feedback that you have would be great. I am in the midst of transitioning from MSU to CMU this week, so I apologize about the lack of posts, but I hope to get back in the swing of posting soon.
A few weeks ago in Chico, I was fortunate enough to meet John Bishop from the other RCWP, Red Clay Writing Project located near Atlanta, and we had a splashing good time there!
Since then, I have been following his blog and I am particularly interested in the recent post that he created about exploring digital storytelling for youth. He asks some key questions there, one being:
3. How can we help foster skills/practices that are “marketable†for youth? In other words, how can we acknowledge various economic/power structures youth face as they navigate through (and exit) different stages of their educational lives? How does/should our work interact with public school curriculums?
I find this particular question relevant to me on three fronts this week as I spend time in meetings and workshops for our writing project’s work. Some of it is still up in the air, so I won’t go into detail here, but three additional questions emerge for me based on some things that are happening in Michigan.
First, Allen Webb has compiled a website that addresses the implementation of the new Michigan High School Content Standards. There is plenty more info there for you to get the entire story, but basically it boils down to the fact that many English teachers in MI are feeling pressure to develop common curriculum and assessments, one that are not — in John’s words — developing “marketable” skills or digital literacies. There is also a petition to sign, and I think that it is worth considering the broader curricular pressures that teachers are under in the scope of John’s questions. How, then, do we begin to engage in serious curricular conversations about teaching digital writing when more and more prescribed curricula seem to be coming down the pike that fail to address it at all?
Second, I am currently attending a workshop sponsored by the Eastern Michigan Writing Project on NWP’s Analytical Scoring Continuum, a scoring rubric redesigned from the six traits model. It has been an interesting workshop so far, and his given us lots to think about in our site’s work and what I will be doing with my pre-service teachers in the fall. That said, my colleague Marcia and I were talking in the car on the way home about the fact that this rubric — like all state assessment/six traits type rubrics — seems to be focused on print-based modes of composition and almost inherently neglects the demands of digital writing. For instance, the idea that writing is “clear and focused” can certainly apply to a blog post like this (I hope), but does it apply to someone creating hypertext fiction with a wiki? This is not a criticism of the model so much as it is me raising the concern, again, that schools are not even thinking about teaching digital writing, let alone beginning to understand the paradigm shift associated with teaching it. How do we help make that shift?
Third, we are beginning to plan for next year’s professional development and — besides needing to figure out exactly what we will offer related to tech-based writing PD — we really need to get some info about research in the field and effectiveness of web-based writing practices. I am going to do some searching on the Pew Internet and American Life site, the MacArthur Foundation’s Digital Learning site, and UConn’s New Literacies Research Team site to see what I can come up with. So, my final question for tonight is this — if you have an empirical studies on digital writing in schools that you can point me to before Thursday morning, could you please post them as comments here?
Thanks for hanging in there with me on this post. I appreciate all the comments — both online and F2F — that you, as readers, give me about this blog. It is very encouraging as a teacher and writer.
And, just so you know, I am finally thinking about doing a more formal podcast starting soon as I am currently an intern in the Webcast Academy. Wish me luck!
Bonnie, Kevin, Tonya, Mary, and I are blogging at the “Using Technology to Tell Stories” blog. Thanks to Bonnie and Kevin for getting the ball rolling on this. We are focusing much of our attention on digital storytelling, but there are other threads evolving, too. So, check it out.
Also, just to continue the read/write web circle, I figured we had to have a wiki, too. It’s write-protected for members, but just send me an email if you want to be a part of it.
Apologies in advance for what will be a long post here, as my “reflection in action” during the conference consisted more of trying to find free wifi and navigating the Riverwalk than it did of actually having time to sit down and think. I tried to break my thinking up by day, for what that’s worth, and hope that these thoughts are useful for all my readers, especially all my colleagues who were unable to attend.
My thoughts on the Tech To Go session are mixed, but all in a good way. On the one hand, I wanted to have it be a little more formal with a larger screen and some chairs, so people would feel free to linger. On the other hand, that was precisely the point. People were able to move around, or just stop by is something caught their eye. Having to
