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.