"Digital Storytelling in the Classroom"

Digital Storytelling in the Classroom

Article review: Chapters 5 and 6

What makes a good story? Dr. Jason Ohler addresses this question in the terms of the new digital age we find ourselves in the midst of. This era of kids spending their every waking minute up to their ears in a digital society. We as educators have a grand tool before us. We just have to keep the student/viewer engaged. In his book, Digital Storytelling in the Classroom he maps this out for us.

Some key elements of digital storytelling:

• Make a map - where is the story going?
• Is there a conflict – what is learned?
• We will forget a lecture but will most often remember a story.
• Stories can be amusing – often keeps the viewer hooked.
• Digital stories shift the focus from technology to what the technology is presenting.
• Students will often know more than we do. Capitalize on this. Use their knowledge of technology to teach others, including yourself.

What I found to be one of the most insightful aspects of these two chapters was the statement that students will often know more than me. Especially when it comes down to technology. I wholeheartedly agree. More often than not this can form a measure of contention in the classroom as it is usually based around some usage of cell phones. Kids can even text with the phone in their pocket. Amazing. But in Digital storytelling and other uses we should capitalize on this and use their expertise to guide our own. Students can be great tools, helping to get rid of the “I cant get this to work right, it wont do anything I want it to” mentality. They are a wealth of information when it comes to shortcuts and putting it all together. Use them.

Techno-Teens. A review of: Teens and Technology - A Good Match?

Teens and Technology – A Good Match. This article reviews the benefits and drawbacks to the connection of today’s teenagers to the technological world unfolding around them. This analysis of the time spent by the new generation of hooked of kids is an invaluable tool into what makes them tick and how they view and interact in their home and social settings as access to new electronic tools becomes increasingly more and more available. Some of the highlights to this article are:

• According to the Kaiser report, “about half of heavy media users (more than 16 hours a day) get fair to poor grades in school, compared with the 23 percent of light users (less than three hours) who earn similar grades.”
• “But the report reveals that when parents do set limits, their teens spend nearly three hours less per day using electronic media than those without restrictions.”
• “The emerging technology has forced the school to address these new challenges.”
• “The study found that 8- to 18-year-olds devote an average of about seven and a half hours a day (around 53 hours a week) to using entertainment media, including television, MP3 players, online time and video games. That's an increase of more than an hour per day from five years ago.”
• “In comparison, teens spend about 25 minutes a day reading books and three minutes reading newspapers.”
• “Use of mobile media may become addictive and as a result become hard to control in a disciplined way,"

I really appreciated this article as it looks at the amount of time today’s teens devote to technology. In some cases as was discussed in the article technology can be used to the benefit of these techno-kids but in too many of the cases it is just used as entertainment that will not further their ability to be citizens of our society with long-term benefits. I think that to exclude technology from today’s education would be a huge mistake and I try to use technology to promote education in the classroom as often as I can. It is hard to find that line where it is educational and not just for entertainment purposes however and I believe that parents must take an active role in educating kids as to what is an appropriate amount of time and what are appropriate technology outlets. Socializing is an important part of our culture and I think that the actual physical contact of socializing is extremely important and is lacking in many of our youths and we should make an effort to limit techno-socializing and promote healthy activities that get kids into the community and into activities in our communities. Promote technology but not at the cost of being a contributor to society.

Matt's IEP

My personalized IEP. My original thoughts for this plan centered on a program called StrataLogica. My intent was to learn how to use this mapping resource and to implement it in the social studies classes I was teaching this past school year. Key to my learning about and learning how to use StrataLogica was a seminar for teachers in the Mat-Su school district. Unfortunately the seminar did not end up happening and I was not able to familiarize myself with StrataLogica.

My subsequent IEP came about almost accidentally. We (my MAT cohort) have been tasked with keeping our own blog and if you are reading this you are reading mine. I am a far cry from what has been termed a “blogger”. Regardless I can see it awesome potential as a teaching tool and I created another blog specifically to use for an Audio conference presentation I did. The Presentation was on the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act. After presenting over the phone and having those who had Internet follow along on the blog I realized that I could with some tweaking use it to present the information as well as lessons and activities for the unit on ANCSA to my Alaskan Studies students.

I did not have the opportunity to use it this last semester as I had already covered that material but I plan to use it extensively in the years to come. Use this link to view the blog that has become my ANCSA Unit.

White Zombie

Reduce your carbon tire tracks

This is an impressive use of the transition to electric cars although maybe not a very applicable one for the average person.

During the '09-'10 school year i proposed the idea of reducing one's carbon footprint. Most of the kids jumped right in but there were some serious big truck, lots of fuel, and black smoke motorheads who had some serious doubts on the coolness of reducing the carbon footprint. "What is cool about that?" . . . . . . . . . .

Here is the hook that brought them in - VIDEO.