Chapter 4 Reflection

Mainstream education currently doesn't encourage, and rarely requires, students to produce schoolwork in "new media" format such as digital stories. Time requirements as well as technology availability are certainly reasons for this... In an era of No Child Left Behind, there is little incentive for teachers to branch out into new areas of literacy or content exploration...

Jason B. Ohler. Digital Storytelling in the Classroom: New Media Pathways to Literacy, Learning, and Creativity (pp. 62-63). Kindle Edition. 

 I agree with the above statement. Even though I believe that students could greatly benefit from DST, there are these limitations. And then there is also this issue of assessing the work: "Without a practical, meaningful way to assess new media, teachers are understandably reluctant to include it in the curriculum" (p. 63). I can create my rubrics, but I am still unsure if those are a good way to approach this issue.


The other quote that stood out was this:

If we want our kids to be "smarter," and if what we mean by that is more useful in the real world, then we need to recognize that a large part of the real world consists of the tEcosystem.

Jason B. Ohler. Digital Storytelling in the Classroom: New Media Pathways to Literacy, Learning, and Creativity (p. 63). Kindle Edition. 

 The Title Ischool I taught at last year was loaded with technology. We needed a class set of computers, we got it. Almost any period during the day. Many students did not have such technology available at home, so all the "digital literacy" they learned was learned at school. So, I believe that school needs to be that place that provides our students with tools needed in order to succeed in this world. Because not every parent can provide their child with the equipment and necessary "how-to's", there needs to be a place in a child's life where all of that is possible. School is a perfect place for that. 


I liked a quote from previous chapters, and I believe that it still applies even in the situations as I described above: "It's not important that teachers be advanced technicians. Their students will cover that for them" (p. 13). Even at that school where students only had technology available to them at school, they still taught me a lot about technology (one example, putting an "s" after http in the address bar in order to "unblock" YouTube... and little things like that).

Chapter 3 Reflection

This chapter seems to be the most useful thus far. Its intriguing title "Digital Storytelling as an Educational Tool" really caught my attention. I absolutely agree with the author's statement that "[f]or the most part, content standards address outcomes more than methodology"(p. 42). However, we as teachers are so bothered by the fact that we need to get through this much of the material, many of us (myself included) try to stay away from taking a risk and trying a non-traditional way of teaching something as important as a particular content standard. It becomes so important because our schools get funded based on our students' performances. It seems to be too high of a risk to take... what if this "something new" doesn't help our students learn. Wouldn't it then be a wasted lesson or a series of lessons? 


In theory, DST should work for all content areas, right? Here's one of my personal favorites:

It also seems reasonable to infer that DST can be used to address most topics within content areas as long as the time, technology access, and technology training exist to support it.

Jason B. Ohler. Digital Storytelling in the Classroom: New Media Pathways to Literacy, Learning, and Creativity (p. 42). Kindle Edition. 

This is what can get us in trouble: time, technology access, and technology training.. These are the most influential parts of implementing DST into my classroom. My school has only one computer lab which is reserved for 1st period every single day because we have one section of computer class and that is when it's taught. Then we have a cart of computers which are also reserved for 1st period every single day because they are needed for our health/driver's education class. This leaves my 1st period without any access to computers ever during this school year. It would not be so bad if my 1st period wasn't one of the three Earth Science sections I am teaching this year. So, what I have to do is plan for 1st period separately, and have my 4th and 6th do more "fun stuff."


When it comes to technology standards, my poor 1st period is out of luck, at least in my class. I sure hope that there are teachers who address that point with these kids.

Suppose you're interested in including DST in a class project and feel the need to explain to parents why you're doing so. You decide to send a letter home to parents to explain what you're doing and why you feel it's important.

Jason B. Ohler. Digital Storytelling in the Classroom: New Media Pathways to Literacy, Learning, and Creativity (p. 60). Kindle Edition. 

Also, teaching in a Title I school, unless I provide ample time in class for my students to work on their projects, I honestly do not think I should be assigning such a project. I do know that these things need to be communicated to families, it's their responses that I am not sure I am ready for.

Chapter 2 Reflection

As I was reading Chapter 2, the same passage stood out, as the one Mike has used as his main quote:

"... science and math teachers, who I've found are typically less likely to make a connection between storytelling and classroom activities."

Jason B. Ohler. Digital Storytelling in the Classroom: New Media Pathways to Literacy, Learning, and Creativity (p. 26). Kindle Edition. 

That is very true of a typical science/math teacher. Very few of my science or math teachers made me write stories about what I learned. I was very strange when my 8th grade Physics teacher (yeah, in other parts of the world, Physics is introduced quite early) used essay assignments as part of assessment of our knowledge. What was even stranger - the feeling I got: I learned a lot more when I thought about the concepts and connections. I still liked the computational part of Physics (because I am a mathematician at heart) but the essays were very helpful. They were not creative writing type of essays, but it was still unheard of! Whoever makes their Physics students write essays?


I am a new teacher and do not have that much experience in this, but I have tried to make it a routine that one day a week, the warm up in my math class was a reflective kind - students would not do math that day but they would just write about their struggles/success/something interesting they realized, etc. At first, there was much resistance, but as the year progressed, the students liked their non-mathy warm up days.


As I was thinking about having my students do blogs about the process of their learning, reflecting on it, I was unsure about having it as a requirement that their posts have pictures. Then I stumbled upon this quote:

A note about still images in digital stories. Make sure students know the gamut of still images available to them so that they can make wise choices about image use. They come in many forms-charts, graphs, original drawings and photos, scanned objects, and so on-all of which have the capacity to be useful as well as distracting. 

Jason B. Ohler. Digital Storytelling in the Classroom: New Media Pathways to Literacy, Learning, and Creativity (p. 31). Kindle Edition. 

 This quote helped me decide: I will require them (in the future) to have a picture that is original and relates to their reflection on learning.It's possible, anyone, especially the digital natives, can do it.

Chapter 1 Reflection

I agree with the author that "[f]inally, we all get to tell our own story in our own way (p. 4)." Reading this first chapter I realized that we really do want to tell our story.. all the time! Isn't that the reason why text messaging was invented? To tell our story. Social network such as MySpace, HighFive, Facebook, Google+, and many more were created for that same reason - to tell a story. 


The more I read, the more I began to realize that technology is a great way to tell our stories. Who in the world would ever think that two full-time-stay-at-home-moms from different parts of the world would ever connect? And now, in this digital age of storytelling, they can and very simply, in the comfort of their own home, all through the blogs they create. 


However, there is always a downside to digitalizing our stories: "if you don't have a good story to tell, the technology just makes it more obvious (p. 6)." It is true not only in the realm of education, it is true everywhere we look. Facebook posts such as "Oh, I just ate. I feel so full" or "I'm bored" always irritated me, now I clearly see why. These people don't really have a good story to tell (but they really want to), and shouting this story out to the whole world just makes that fact so much more obvious.


We, as educators, have a great amount of wonderful stories to tell. However, let's not forget that our students do, too, but need our help to be able to do so "in their language." Lana mentioned that her students were more willing to complete assignments on the class blog than in their journals. The author of our textbook says something very similar: 

Students inhabit a largely oral and digital world, then sit in classrooms where the printed word is the primary medium in play. Digital storytelling allows them to express content-area understanding in ways that are familiar. I have seen digital stories that do everything from explain math, science, and literature concepts to illuminate the interior landscapes of cultural, artistic, and personal perspective.

Jason B. Ohler. Digital Storytelling in the Classroom: New Media Pathways to Literacy, Learning, and Creativity (pp. 10-11). Kindle Edition. 

I was looking though one Physics teacher's Web Site and stumbled upon a great idea: she required her students to create a blog and post their chapter reflections/questions/successes on it. I've given my students a similar task, but they do those same things in their science notebooks, not online. I will definitely try to include a digitalized version of this assignment into my classroom in future years because I do believe that students need to be able to tell their story THEIR way.

A test post :)

Welcome to my Digital StoryTelling blog.
Above is the picture of the two most awesome boys in the whole world. I'm not sure exactly what kinds of stories we are going to "digitally tell" here, but I sure hope you'll get to hear their stories, too :)
More posts to come, so stay tuned :)