Quote: "The problem for many students is their focus on the power of the technology rather than the power of thier stories. Some students are engaging the medium at the expense of the message, producing a technical event rather than a story. Part of my task as a digital storytelling teacher is to teach students how to be storyrellers. Two important components of my approach to teaching storytelling are story mapping and practicing written and oral story telling before bringing in digital elements."
Reaction: I think that Ohler is right about students getting lost in the technology aspect of assignments like these. Even in our current digital storytelling assignment, I've been focusing more on all of the nifty things I can do with the story maker as opposed to putting most of my focus on the point of the story. If it's difficult for me as a college student, then younger students would definitely need to be taught more skills in that area. I also really like the way Ohler goes about teaching his students so that they can avoid losing their story in their digital medium. I think it's really a great thing that he teaches oral and written storytelling first, because those are important skills and without them the students would be overwhelmed by the idea of not only telling a story but telling it using digital media.
Resource: Ohler, J. (2005). The world of digital storytelling. Retrieved from http://www.jasonohler.com/pdfs/digitalStorytellingArticle1-2006.pdf
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This is the same quote that I used and your reaction is about equal to mine. We all know that the little 5th graders in computer class are just trying to find the coolest ways for their pictures to come in and how many different ways can they words on the slide come in. This is just from personal experience, observing myself and my fellow classmates do exactly that.
ReplyDeleteI feel the same way you do. Younger students might get alittle caught up in the all the different gagets; instead on focusing on the main assignment. Other teachers should provide the same requirements to have tell oral stories.
ReplyDeleteIt is really interesting and fascinating to see fruitful results from our students when they make Photostory to show us their lives, however, believe me or not, to grantee the smooth process during teaching is not a fun at all. It is something absolutely serious.
ReplyDeleteI do agree with you that kids should learn the aspects of story telling and composing a story before taking on digital story telling. It is a lot to take on all at once. Great post!
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