Chapter 5 Reflection

As I started reading chapter 5, at first I was not sure if this was something that I could use. As I read on, then read a few of my classmates’ posts, I figured that I could apply story mapping to my curriculum. Campbell’s story line provides some great ideas:

“Campbell's quest in concentrated form that focuses on primarily one thing: how people change, learn, and grow because of the challenges and opportunities in their lives. In the world of education, this translates very directly into how students are transformed by their learning.”  

Jason B. Ohler. Digital Storytelling in the Classroom: New Media Pathways to Literacy, Learning, and Creativity (p. 72). Kindle Edition.

After reading those lines, the idea of a reflective blogs for my science kids came to mind again. I’d love to see the creative ways they would come up with to tell their story, to tell me about their struggles and triumphs, to make the connections they never thought were possible. Some students still do this kind of reflecting but the boring paper-pencil way. Opening up the opportunity to telling their stories digitally would, I anticipate, open up a few more minds, which are reluctant to share at this point.

At some point of reading this chapter, I realized that it would be a lot more engaging for my students and would fulfill that storyteller-listener covenant, if my lessons were stories. I even thought of creating a character who would go with my class all through the book, present the character’s problem that would be solved by the end of the chapter/section. It feels like it’s going to be so much work, but I want to try that this coming school year. Maybe that should me my action research… now that’s a thought worth spending some time on...

As I read this chapter, I highlighted a lot of passages. Addressing them all here would make my post too long and even less likely to be read :) but I do want to share one thing. Toward the end of the chapter, Ohler reminded his readers that:

“You want students to go from idea to story core to story map with as little technological distraction as possible… 

…And because story mapping happens at the very beginning of the process, using pencil and paper, students aren't distracted by technology as they develop their stories.”  

Jason B. Ohler. Digital Storytelling in the Classroom: New Media Pathways to Literacy, Learning, and Creativity (p. 85, 86). Kindle Edition.

I wish I read this earlier, before I started a little project with my students on hurricane hunters. Because I wanted to “save time,” I gave them directions and computers almost simultaneously. No wonder the stories did not come out as good as I hoped. Well, I learned from my mistakes and this book that we need to spend some time on mapping our story first, the pencil-paper way, and only then introduce computers. Lesson learned. Thank you, Ohler, for making me see this.