Chapter 7 Reflection

“It actually makes good sense to start at the end if you already have a goal in mind or a point you want to make with your story.”  

Jason B. Ohler. Digital Storytelling in the Classroom: New Media Pathways to Literacy, Learning, and Creativity (p. 102). Kindle Edition.

As I read the above quote, I thought, “It’s what we as teachers do every time we deliver a lesson. We know the outcome we want to produce, so we think of a way that would get our students to those outcomes.” And the author goes on to say,

“You're a teacher who is going to use storytelling in a content area. No doubt your lesson plan already spells out learning objectives. Use these objectives as the end of your learning story and design backward (Wiggins & McTighe, 2001) to create stories through lesson plans.”  

Jason B. Ohler. Digital Storytelling in the Classroom: New Media Pathways to Literacy, Learning, and Creativity (p. 102). Kindle Edition.

It’s like he was reading my mind and speaking to me! It is probably due to the nature of what I am doing on a regular basis, but I tend to favor this type of story planning. It makes sense to me. After all, most BTSA assignments I was doing this year had the same idea behind them: “Plan with the end in mind.”

Even though I think that starting to plan a story from the middle is not a bad idea, I’m still in favor of doing it from the end. Telling the story from the middle has its advantages:

“If we start from the point that today is the day that we're called to adventure to address a problem, question, opportunity, challenge, or goal, then we place ourselves squarely in the center of our own personal story maps.”  

Jason B. Ohler. Digital Storytelling in the Classroom: New Media Pathways to Literacy, Learning, and Creativity (p. 102). Kindle Edition.

I think this would produce more exciting stories, stories that many can relate to. This method just isn’t my personal favorite.

The quote “Powerful experiences become powerful stories when we reflect on how the experiences changed us” (Ohler, p. 104) is precisely what this class seems to be about thus far. We are reflecting on how reading this book has changed us or can potentially change us and our teaching (for many of us who are teachers). So, in the language of our course, a powerful blog is a blog that tells us a story of some sort of transformation.

Reflect away, my dear classmates! Tell the world your awesome stories! :)