digital storytelling: what can it do?

The more I read about digital storytelling, the more I can see using it in my future classroom. I think this is due in part to my tendency to focus on details. When digital storytelling was just a vaguely defined and huge project I was hesitant to try to pictures its use in the classroom. However, now that I have several excellent step by step guides to refer to, leading my students through a digital storytelling project seems much more doable.In his article "Digital Storytelling Finds Its Place in the Classroom," Tom Banaszewski reiterated some of the important points that other authors had made, but also gave me some new information about successfully including this type of project in a writing curriculum. One of his main points of emphasis is that digital storytelling really benefits from student to student collaboration. Having students help each other discover and explore is a one of my biggest teaching goals, so the fact that digital storytelling easily lends itself to this is a huge incentive for me to use it in my classroom. I believe that student collaboration can provide a completely different type of learning than teacher instruction can, and since real world problems are often solved by people working together and not by one person telling everyone else what to do, I think that learning how to operate in this way is incredibly important. If students can learn a skill such as how to use video editing software as well as gain practice in guiding each, all while expressing themselves and their writing talents in a public way, I don't see why I wouldn't use this project to teach.
I addition to convincing me that digital storytelling is a worthwhile use of class time, this article also gave me some more helpful tips for how to orchestrate the project. I understood that planning was important, but having a list of exactly what type of planning needs to be done before students should start compiling visual and audio files is an excellent resource. We've already read some great instructions for actually creating the digital story so I really appreciate Mr. Banaszeki's insights on the planning stage.
I also really enjoyed reading about the prompt that was used in the article. I definitely want to give my students at least some guidelines to guide their project, so I appreciated hearing how one teacher gave their students ideas for content. Although I still don't completely understand the digital storytelling process, the idea of using it in the classroom is growing on me.

useful instructions

The readings for this week and the last have been of a decidedly different nature than those we read in earlier in the semester. As we begin to work more seriously on the digital storytelling project, the articles have become less about how technology in general can benefit education and more about the specifics of using film to create great projects. The article "Understanding Digital Images" by J.V. Bolkan deals with the very important and very confusing topic of digital image resolution and how it affects the use of digital cameras in the classroom. The main point of the article, which I only vaguely understood prior to my reading, is that the way that pictures are stored can permanently the computer can y alter the images. This means that even if the picture is taken with the best digital camera on the market, the way it is stored either on the camera or on a computer can significantly change the picture quality. The article also discussed how editing or altering images in any way can decrease the clarity and make it impossible to restore the image to its original state. While I learned a lot about the specifics of purchasing cameras and storing pictures while keeping resolution in mind, what I found to be most helpful were the tips regarding how to edit images. I probably won't remember much about the specific sizes or types of files I should use to save my pictures, but I will definitely remember not to drastically resize, over edit or in other ways significantly change a picture in ways that will decrease its quality. This article will change the way I take pictures, both in the classroom and in my personal life. Now that I know the harm too much editing can cause, I will take more time to plan shots and be sure to take multiple pictures with different angles and lighting to minimize the amount of editing that must be done.
The importance of planning was also discussed in Karen Lindstrom's "10 tips for filming, " a handy begninner's guide to creating a successful video interview. I love the format of this piece, since lists are easy for teachers to use and easy for students to refer back to during a project. Since I don't have much experience with using video technology I really appreciated the simple words and explanations used. I am definitely going to save these tips so I can use them during my digital storytelling project and also so I can give them to my students to help with video projects. I am going to work on compiling lists similar to this one for all of the technologies I want to use in my classroom in order to help my students.
"Beyond Words" by Bernajean Porter provides more in depth explanations for many of the topics covered in "10 tips for filming." While the first article could be used as a quick reference during filming, sections of Porter's piece would be an excellent document for students to read prior to beginning work on a digital storytelling project. I can see the advice in this article being used in a classroom because of the simple way it is worded and its focus on small scale, amateur projects. While it would be great if all students could use professional microphones and editing programs, most students will probably have very limited access to this type of equipment. Porter's article does a great job of giving realistic instruction for digital storytelling projects in the classroom.

Video Interviewing

The "How to Shoot Video Interviews" website provides a lot of basic information about how to conduct and film an interview. This site is a great resource for someone who has an idea for a project that includes a video interview but doesn't know exactly how to get started. As someone who has never worked on a project like this before, I found the information provided on this website incredibly helpful. One of the most helpful parts, in my opinion, is the step by step instructions for successfully facilitating an interview. In addition to providing instruction for actually recording the interview, the site talks about how to make initial contact with the interviewee, the procedures you should follow in order to maintain a proper amount of respect and politeness and even a reminder to send a thank-you note after the interview. This type of instruction supplements the more factual directions, like composing and sequencing shots (which is something that I have no previous experience with.) I also found the definitions included in the site to be very helpful, since while it's not necessary to use the correct vocabulary it makes the whole process more professional and cuts down on confusion. The glossary provided is also a great tool to help with this.
While I found the factual information included in this site to be incredibly helpful, if this project were to be used in a classroom there would also have to be a focus on why the interview was being performed, not just how to do it. One of the great things about interviews is that they are an excellent type of primary sources. Students might be more interested in hearing someone talk about how theirr town was founded than they would be in just reading about it in a textbook. Interviews give factual information a human component. Interviews can also help students to understand that primary sources don't have to be old; they're being created all the time. These benefits mean that interviews would be great to use in a history or English classroom, where the focus is on stories and past events. However, they could also be used in a science, math or foreign language classes to interview someone who is an expert in that field.
Once students are comfortable with the reasons for conducting an interview, this site would be very helpful for beginning the process. I have bookmarked this site and will definitely refer back to it, both for this class and in the future.

digital storytelling!

As I was reading "Constructing Digital Stories" by Sara Kajder, Glen Bull, and Susan Albaugh the sentence "A student who might find a 10-page essay daunting may find a story of this size approachable." really stood out to me. This is because I find myself in the opposite situation; I have no problem turning out ten page papers, but using technology to express myself visually is terrifying. I was definitely schooled in the settings described, where labs have to be reserved weeks in advance and there's one, if any, computers in the classroom. For the most part my school experience was technology free, so I'm having a hard time understanding how and why technology should be used for something (like storytelling) that can be adequately completed using the traditional tools of pencil and paper. Therefore, the step by step guide to creating a digital story was incredibly helpful to me. Although it may be obvious to some of my classmates and future students, I had no idea whether visual or audio files should be uploaded first. Nor did I know to save each narrated sentence in a different file. These practical, easy to understand pieces of advice make sense to me and will definitely be useful for the digital storytelling assignment. Additionally, this article underlines the importance of providing students a framework in which to explore their creativity. Like traditional teaching, teaching with technology should allow students to be independent but also be assured that they have help at the ready, if they should need it. Putting computers in front of students doesn't change their fundamental needs and it shouldn't change the meaning of the support I give them, even if it does take on a different form.

Jennifer New touches on some of the same subject in her article "How to Use Digital Storytelling in Your Classroom." Her fifth tip for effectively using digital storytelling is "Give your students freedom, but hold them accountable." She acknowledges that not all teachers are comfortable using this technology, but goes on to explain that this does not prevent them from using it in ways that support and enhance learning. Her approach is that storytelling is part of human nature; we all know how to tell stories, so we should let our natural abilities shine through while using technology to improve the presentation. When the focus is placed on the content and not on using every piece of technology perfectly, it becomes much easier for us to approach the project. I need to remember that my students don't require perfection of me. They're willing to watch me learn with them and, sometimes, be my teacher. Using digital storytelling in the classroom is feasible and can be a great tool to aide in the learning process, regardless of whether I can answer every technology question or not. As my students and explore using this innovation together, remembering to "not let the technology get in the way of the story" will help us to produce meaningful, relevant and fun learning tools.

Self-Directed Learning

A major theme I have encountered this semester in TEL 313 is that technology is not useful in the classroom if it is only added as an afterthought. To really be an asset and not a distraction to the lesson, technology has to be used in an authentic (real-world applicable) way. Debra Sprague and Christopher Dede continue the discussion of this topic in their article “If I Teach This Way, Am I Doing My Job?” The two authors relate the organic use of technology in the classroom to the learning theory of Constructivism, which allows for students to take information from the real world and discover its meaning themselves, rather than being given the information and meaning from an authority figure. This type of learning requires a different atmosphere then traditional schooling; students must be allowed to be noisy, collaborative and somewhat self directed. They must be allowed to fail, ask questions and come up with answers that the teacher might not expect. All of these elements can make teachers reluctant to employ this theory in their classroom, since traditional ways of thinking about education require that students be silently working in rows while the teacher lectures. Sprague and Dede argue that technology can greatly enhance Constructivism, since it makes it relatively easy for students to find lots of information on their own and interpret it in innovative ways. In other words, technology helps students to more effectively self-direct their learning.

What some people who don’t like this type of teaching don’t understand is that having students use technology to guide their education doesn’t mean the teacher stops teaching. Actually, since this style often leads students into discovering new realms of information the teacher has to really understand the topic as well as the learning process. Having students become active decision makers in their own education requires just as much, if not more, work on the teacher’s part as traditional teaching.

What I really like about this article was that it gave some specific examples of integrating technology into the classroom, rather than just saying that it should be done. I know that technology will have to have a place in my classroom and that my teaching can be greatly enhanced by its use. As an English teacher there will be plenty of times that students can use technology to write, research and interpret literature on their own. Just because the answers they come up with don’t match what I would have doesn’t mean they’re not learning. Actually, their different way of thinking could be an indicator that they are exploring the topic using higher order thinking skills. The idea that technology can help students to direct their own learning is exciting to me and something I will definitely use in my classroom.

Nazis, Hitler and Research Resources

In today's world, where we use the internet every day for a variety of purposes it is undeniably important to be able to at assess the validity of information we find online. David Marcovitz talks about how this is even more important than usual in the field of education in his article "I read it on the computer, it must be true." Marcovitz says that students will often believe anything that is presented in a professional looking manner, and one of the perils of the internet is that most anything can look legitimate, regardless of whether it is reliable. As teachers, it is our job to not only teach our students how to find information online, but also how to make good judgments about what they have found. Marcovitz presents a lesson plan that leads students to multiple websites that address the same topic in different ways with different biases to help them see how even information that looks reliable can be questionable. I don't want to make my students untrusting and paranoid, but I do want to help them make informed judgments about everything they read, whether it is online or not.

Like Marcovitz, author Joyce Kasman Valenza is concerned with the type of information that students are accessing. However, the focus of her article "What's not on the web" is all of the valuable research sources that students miss when they rely solely on the internet. Valenza lists some of the resources that are available in hard copies such as reference books and older magazine articles, as well as why these are valuable to the research process. This topic is important to me as a future teacher because it will be up to me to show my digital learners that it is sometimes a good idea to turn off the computer for a while. I will have to make a concentrated effort to teach them how to effectively use nondigital resources to supplement their online research. As with most things, the answer to where the best place to find information is is not black and white. Online and traditional resources both have their benefits and drawbacks, and it is my job as a teacher to show my students when to use each.

Make it Real!

In the article "Constructing Learning: Using Technology to Support Teaching for Understanding," Thomas Sherman and Barbara Kurshan discuss the idea that in order for technology to be of real benefit in the classroom it can't just be thrown on top of content as a flashy extra; it must be integrated into teaching practices in an organic and meaningful way. To illustrate how this can be done the article lists eight characteristics of a good education according to constructivist theory. According to this way of thinking, high quality education is learner centered, interesting, applicable to real life, social, active, aware of time, inclusive of appropriate feedback and supportive. The article goes on to suggest ways that technology can be included to improve teaching in all of these areas and, hopefully, improve student performance and success.

The ideas suggested in this article are important because they reflect the need for technology that enhances, not distracts from, quality teaching practices and valuable content information. I know that many times during my schooling technology was added to classes as an afterthought or to fulfill a specific requirement. Often, if technology was used at all it was not at all vital to the lesson and probably could and should have been left out. This is especially troublesome when you start to think about how integrated technology is into our daily lives. There are probably many high schoolers who use technology regularly everywhere except in school, and the fact that this built in teaching tool is so often ignored or misused is a cause for concern.

Although I am comfortable using computers and my cell phone, I would definitely not say that I am completely up to date with technology and I know that my future students will most likely be much more proficient at using technology than I am. Therefore, it will be even more vital that I include technology in an organic and meaningful way in my lessons. I strongly believe in the importance of the previously discussed eight characteristics of good education and it excites me to know that I can incorporate technology into these teaching practices. For me and other new teachers, the key to reaching our students will be not creating an entirely new format for teaching technology, but using technology in ways that make the good techniques we already know even better.