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Blog Entry for Chapters 4-6 in Digital Storytelling

[A note about me as a blogger: I am wrestling with exactly who I am writing this blog for.  If this was a paper for Mark, then I would have rewritten that last sentence so the preposition wasn’t at the end of the sentence.  But I am thinking this is less like a paper, and after reading everyone’s blogs, and after reading that we were supposed to write about what we find helpful for learning about digital stories, that this blog is primarily for me, and that I have an audience of my classmates and Mark that will read it and possibly assist with my thinking.  So with that, I change my approach form last week, where I basically summarized.  This week, I only write what added to my own understanding about assessment and digital stories.]

Chapter 4 Assessing Digital Stories

A way to have teachers consider assessment issues is to suggest they have an answer to a potential question by parents, “Why did you have my child create a digital story, and how did you grade it?” from page 63.  I am not sure that Ohler consciously used that question as a way to embark on the notion of assessing, or if he just pointed out that parents will ask that.  In either case, embedding new ideas in how teachers will use them in their work is always a better way to approach professional learning.  The other thing such a question does is to provide the teacher with some space to answer the question about assessment—she can consider it from a parent’s perspective rather than her own.  This shift in perspective can allow teachers to try on more than one side of the issue, rather than clinging to personal beliefs.

There are other work products along the way to students producing a digital story which can be useful in assessing students, i.e. scripts, work plans, visual representations of stories or story maps or story boards. 

Assessment of media might include a time when a student defends their choices and justifies their thinking.  I agreed with this thought and considered that such an event could be part of the complete projects—an interview with the creator (the student) where there might be 2 or 3 questions that would be part of every interview, and the possibility that there would be more questions.  I am not sure if this should be an interview with just the teacher, whole class, small group or with some sort of panel of outside folks.  That would probably depend on the project—and that makes this sound like a huge endeavor.  I was thinking more along the lines of a couple of questions posed by the teacher during an interview, after work was presented to the class.  It could be that interview is digitally recorded and reviewed later by the teacher—and not done live.

Chapter 5: Thinking About Story

Ohler spends a great deal of time distinguishing between the story core and the story map and the story board.  I can see this is because students probably have difficulty in fleshing out a good idea for a story, but it seemed like a bit of overkill.  I kept waiting for the ideas to really help with students, which I figure is the diagram and making sure it has all the representative parts.  So to summarize:

• Story Core is the story of “how people change, learn, and grow” and presents a central challenge for such changing and learning and growing.
• Story Map depicts the emotional journey.
• Story Board depicts the events and details of the journey, and how the logistical bits of the story will fit together to create the events in the story.

Ohler speaks about tension and how stories are better if tension isn’t just broken easily, and the resolution to the problem happens too quickly.  He cites McKee (1997) as suggesting a “seesaw” approach to the resolution which would make varying degrees of tension in the story.  As I thought about this and about mathematics—learning of mathematics should include some struggle, some opportunities for students to persevere and try different strategies.  Teachers have a tendency to over-scaffold—no fault of their own, we were taught to scaffold and are only trying to help.  But I can image that students in mathematics classes applying DST might be telling a story like the one Ohler presented about rolling a ball on a beach, in which the students tell the story of 2 things: 

• First, asking their own question about why the ball skidded instead of rolling,
• Second, figuring out how to answer that question.

So a DST in math could be structured like that, where the story is about how the students solving the problem and their learning journey—and less a report about the solution.  Moreover, the DST and the idea that there should be tension in a story, could be connected with the idea for teachers, that students need to struggle a bit (not too much just enough to know they can overcome and that they have the power to attack the next task).  The understanding that the story needs tension to be a good story might assist teachers in overcoming the urge to over scaffold as students are solving.

The picture of the story, the Visual Portrait of the Story, was an interesting tool that seems like it would be useful for students.  I can see that much of this is in line with giving multiple access points and using different modalities in order to give access to the students—sound teaching practice.  I do have to say, that I would love to see the power in the digitally telling the story—not that I doubt it isn’t useful—I am just thinking that much of what Ohler describes is good for non-digital reasons.  Naturally we do need to meet the kids where they are --starting with what they know is sound pedagogical practice.  If my students are digital in their lives, then his point about making sure we actually teach students to be better with it, makes sense.  I guess I am a bit like some of the respondents to the survey we conducted for our group project in EDTE 282, I’d like to see a finished product that harnesses the power of the digital world so I can say, “Oh yes, now that wouldn’t have been nearly as good a learning experience without the digital media aspect.”  [And now I reflecting about blogging again, and wondering how much “journaling and personal reflection” I should be doing, as I am probably boring the audience while I process internally. Hmmmm…]

Chapter 6:

One useful idea for actually implementing digital stories is the notion of keeping the story map diagram to one page.  This means the creator must be able to pick out the important pieces and know how they fit together to tell the story.  The examples of the story maps for the stories were helpful, but his method of leading up to us creating a story map for the William Tell story was the most useful.  I noted a connection to his telling of that story and a strategy that is particularly useful in a mathematics classroom.   In math, if you want students to state their reasons and to explain, then saying something wrong, letting them catch you, and then asking how they knew it was wrong, is a good strategy.  It checks their understanding.  It turns the accountability of making sense of math and being correct in math over to the students instead of the teacher, and it gives something to start from as they explain their reasoning that the teacher is wrong.  In this same way, he created a story, a bad story, so we could discern what was missing.  He suggested ways to improve it that were still lacking, so that we could figure out why that didn’t work, and what a better way to tell the story and create tension might be.  Finally, he presented the story map that fit the last version of the story.  As I think about it now, I can imagine story maps for the false starts he had, maps with flat endings on the diagram, just like he talked us through.

[Blogging: I have to admit, as I write, I cannot forget that I am writing something my classmates will read, and it seems a bit self centered—not sure that is the right word.  But it seems overindulgent to think you all will be as interested in my inner musing about why I found stuff interesting or not.  I am missing those visual cues that one gets in face-to-face conversation, to know if I’ve said too much.  And I haven’t heard your ideas, and had a fair exchange.  So yes “overindulgent” is the right word.  I do apologize for my musings above, and for this one here too.  It is how I process stuff.]