DST review

The EdTechTalk site featured a discussion hosted by three educators with Jason Ohler, their special guest. Dr. Ohler has an extensive resume in the field of digital story telling. Now retired, he speaks, educates, and provides workshops regarding “using technology effectively, creatively, and wisely to learn, work and play in the digital age (from jasonohler.com). The podcast was an open discussion between Ohler, the three hosts and also featured questions from a live chat room. When Ohler does a workshop for students he likes to tell them, “We aren’t writing, we are media scripting, like in the movies!” The students are very excited that they don’t have to “write” and get to “media script”. This shows that the stigma against writing in schools is an attitudinal, inspirational, and motivational issue, not a cognitive issue. I found this interesting; the implementation of technology is a great way to motivate kids and can act as a “distracter” from the fact that they are still writing.

Ohler mentions a “magical point in the evolution of story telling”. It sounded like he thinks technology (DST to be specific) can restore what has been lost with regard to creativity in schools. The teachers hosting provided examples from their students, citing that students ask questions such as “what is this supposed to look like?” and “what color should this be?”. Some of our schooling has become so strict that students are getting trained to not be creative. Ohler attributes part of this to NCLB. He states that the time spent making sure students can pass standardized tests could be used for creative processes. Additionally, he thinks that NCLB is taking away from the “art of teaching” and that it limits the number of teachable moments, so perhaps teachers are losing some of their creativity as well. I agree with Dr. Ohler, providing opportunities for students to think critically and create should be maximized in schools, not limited to a simple standardized test score. Much valuable assessment can come from analyzing the process of a task, not just the end product.

(Podcast from http://edtechtalk.com/taxonomy/term/618)

The “10 Technology Enhanced Alternatives to Book Reports” webpage was interesting. While the 10 suggestions are all great for classroom teachers, it was the introduction that intrigued me the most. The author, Kelly Tenkely, notes the dreadfulness of book reports and notes a the term read-i-cide, for which she provides this definition, “Read-i-cide n: The systematic killing of the love of reading, often exacerbated by the inane, mind-numbing practices found in schools.” http://stenhouse.com/html/readicide.htm.” Tenkely suggests technology as a cure for read-i-cide. I think technology can be part of the cure for “x-i-cide”, where x is anything school related (school-i-cide, learning-i-cide, writing-i-cide, exercise-i-cide, etc.). When I long-term-subbed PE at Shiloh Middle School, the students wore pedometers throughout the class and had a certain number of steps to achieve. This simple use of technology was a great motivator and kept kids active the whole class; many of them did not care what grade they got, they just wanted to get the pedometer number as high as possible. Pedometers will be one of the first pieces of technology I request when I am teaching in the schools. http://theapple.monster.com/benefits/articles/8529-10-technology-enhanced-alternatives-to-book-reports?page=1

The Cogdogroo webpage (http://cogdogroo.wikispaces.com/StoryIdeas) provides suggestions on how to synthesize story ideas. The first suggestions are story prompt questions, such as “what was your favorite childhood pet?” and “what is the most adventurous thing you have ever done?”. The next set of suggestions provides visuals that have a certain mystic to them that could be potentially story-provoking. I found the phrasr tool very cool (http://www.pimpampum.net/phrasr/index.php). Type in any phrase and a picture is assigned to each word that represents the word in some way. This site stressed that the topic of the story was not crucial; one should pick a topic quickly and then get to know the technology. The point of the workshop is to gain experience being creative with the DST technologies. While this contradicts Dr. Ohler’s webcast thoughts, where he says that the story is what makes a good DST (not the technology) I understand that for the purposes of learning the tools that the content manipulated is not of highest importance.

Digital storytelling can be used in my classroom when addressing the affective domain. When I want my students to demonstrate how they feel in my class, DST can be a great tool. Using images from class, students can add their own emotions to a scenario. This will make me a better teacher as I will be able to know first hand what activities the students enjoy, dislike, find boring, want more of, etc. At the upper grade levels, students can observe their performances and describe what was going through their minds, or add a creative twist to the image of the athlete. The completed projects could be posted online; I bet parents would love to how PE has changed since when they took it!