My Digital Story

“Through creating electronic personal narratives, students become active creators, rather than passive consumers, of multimedia. They combine oral, written, digital and art literacies as they become heroes of their own learning stories.”  Jason Ohler

Throughout the  Coetail assignments, especially in the initial units, we have been looking at why pupils should be producers of media and not just consumers. Engaging with them to become more than just passive users of information and connections; instead to create content and share ideas. However, I feel, it is crazy to expect pupils to do this if we are not doing this ourselves. I personally produce a lot of content, however it is more tutorial based. This project asked me to look more deeply at storytelling.Storytelling through images is not a new thing we recently took a Grade 9 trip to the replica of Grotte Chauvet, which boasts some of the oldest prehistoric paintings. It was amazing to see how the images had been developed (of course there is no way of knowing why they were painted) and how one could see the start of motion and animation. Some animals were drawn on-top of one another in differing poses that looked like movement. You could also clearly see a story, a sense that you were watching an event from the time - thrilling!In my early years (and well through University) it was very expensive to have filming equipment and story telling was a very oral event and a very social event. Sitting and listening to a story, participating in the creation of a story, making our own stories (often accompanied with plenty of dressing up - when I was younger). It was a real family event and social event that went far beyond being a passive activity as we were all creators - however it was rarely captured by media, apart from the occasional photograph, instead it was kept alive in our minds . However this changed as technology became cheaper and eventually we all had the power of production in our handsNow I say change, for my family the only change is that we have more still images. We still have limited videos and story telling is still an oral event, often being accompanied by wine. However, within the classroom almost every child has an amazing recording device at their fingertips. They can tell there own story and process ideas through this amazing medium. Here is a lovely example of just that.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOsMn22xrooSo the challenge - to tell a story! I need the work I do here to have a practical use within the classroom. I have therefore developed a story, a strange story, a look at my digital profile. I want to show the pupils my profile so that they can then look at their own.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prohderJUeAMaybe it is not the most beautiful piece, but I will use it in lessons across the high school and I will be asking the pupils to evaluate it to tell me how to make it into a better story - which, of course I will share! I will also use as it a method to engage them in a conversation about their digital footprint. After reading this piece on Digital Story telling I would like the pupils to engage more with this practice within my teaching - my thoughts are to replace standard evaluations with more of a project journey through digital story telling!