Week 9 - Reflections on Digital Story Telling

This week we were introduced to several variations of digital storytelling. The links to explanations by Dr. Helen Barret were my favorite. The Educause Learning Initiative sites filled in my sense of the role digital stories can play in education, and the 7 elements of good storytelling listed at www.storycenter.org filled in my sense of the literary and compositional elements that make for good storytelling.
As highlighted in the EducauseConnect article, I like that digital storytelling facilitates different learning styles connected to student interests and technology. Moreover I like that it helps students develop their abilities to "evaluate and use online content and electronic tools as a means of personal expression." For the first time I can recall, this week's lesson also included examples. I love examples, as they help me form a much better idea of the expected assignment.
I decided to involve my family in creating a digital story of my own. We chose to create a story around a day trip to a Sheep and Wool festival. After taking some photos, video clips, and a collecting a few other photos, I set out to build the story. I used iMovie for the first time, in order to assemble all the components. To learn the software, and then assemble the story took several hours, but is likely to go faster next time. When my family saw the finished product, they were all very excited. Here's a link if you are interested: My Wooly Digital Movie. By far the member of the family most excited by the technology was my 6th grade daughter. Now she wants to use digital storytelling for a report on the history of Halloween. Of course that means having to first really learn the content. Isn't that just the way it should be? Very powerful. Imagine how this technique could add to the learning experience of field trips. Imagine the insight teachers could get from seeing the field trip from the perspective of their student this way.
A second experience was with Voicethread. In the context of an on-line class session, the instructor directed us to respond to 7 questions. The time was limited. The instructor did not properly connect members of the group to each other electronically, and presented what I felt were confusing directions. The following day I found that the instructor had posted that class session on various public websites. I promised myself, that if I ever were to take it upon myself to publicize the work of my students, together with their names, I would notify them and ask their permission first. Many of us have seen the results of high-school students who use clandestine means to record their instructors and the post the recordings on the web. Public school teachers may have to expect that this might occur, as they are public servants expected to act professionally at all times. That students should need to be concerned that their professors will record their responses during a class, then post them on the web without consent, seems uncalled for.
Rather than posting a captured class session on the web, or assigning us to tell a digital story with strong emotional content from our point of view, and post it on the web, I believe a more appropriate way to teach this subject would be to assign students to create the digital story and submit it electronically without also requiring it to be posted publicly. Similarly, the Voicethread exercise might have been a more positive experience had they been confined to the Moodle system designed for online class sessions.