Thing 4: Digital Storytelling

Schools have gotten away from the power of storytelling.  With the emphasis on high stakes testing, evidence based writing and textual complexity have often dominated the discourse, leaving behind artistry, craft, and expression.


At my school we are beginning to notice the impact of this shift in focus.  Item analysis shows that students, in addition to continue to struggle in writing about analysis, are struggling with questions about author's purpose and craft.  Words like "impact," "effect," and "purpose" are causing confusion as students most frequent interaction with text is as consumers seeking answers.


In exploring this "Thing" I found myself being drawn back into the mindset of teaching students to be explorers seeking to experience text, seek out every nook and cranny of possibility, and learn to not just consume but express and share their understandings.


That is the power of Digital Storytelling: it asks students to not just consume, but express, and provides outlets to look at the more subjective intent and experience of reading.


I find myself thinking about the action research I read about in "You Gotta Be the Book" by Jeffrey Wilhelm.  He explores what highly engaged readers DO as they read, and found that they CREATE a secondary world within their head that lives outside the pages of the book.  This secondary world contains all the possibilities, imagination, subtext, emotional connection, and is unique to individuals.  Ultimately, every author's goal is to create that secondary world, so we need to aid students in their journey to experience it and express it.


That's where I see digital story telling fitting in:  Construct a illustration of a character's journey; or of how a central idea about power was developed chronologically in a story, or of how the author characterizes an individual.  Add music, pictures, and words that each have an explicit purpose or contribute to this understanding.   Make the students justify their selection of each picture (and thus experience what it is like to be an author yourself, opening the lid on the mystery of author's purpose).


I've used Windows Movie Maker and iMovie in the past for these efforts, but the technological barriers meant the projects took longer than what was desirable.  I explored a few of the sites;

The Winners

Steller


It was interesting and easy to use on the phone, and would be desirable for field work and/or home work assignments.  In school it may be less desirable: there are fewer features, it relies on your photo library on your phone, and requires students to be on their phones, which may be against the rules in some schools, or may introduce management issues.  For quick projects or projects on the run, this makes content creation easy.


Adobe Spark


By far my favorite, this takes the strengths of movie maker (the ability to merge all kinds of media: image, text, video, music) while having a web interface.  I was also impressed with the suggested template system.  I tested it using the topic we are currently covering in my English IV class: tracking the development of the central ideas of identity and power in Gogol's "The Overcoat."  By typing in some key words it automatically suggested a series of templates that could be related, including hero's journey, character development, rise and fall.  It seems well supported by video tutorials and samples.  I will be using this in the future!

The Also-Rans

I explored these tools, but they were not exactly what I was looking for, and didn't really blow my mind.

Photopeach

Cool interface, and I liked the fact that there were a couple cool unique features: users can leave comments that are appended onto the end of the show; you can integrate multiple choice quizzes into the slideshow.  I couldn't see a way to tally or record the results, so that latter feature seemed more gimmicky than useful, thought it could develop into a more full fledged resource later on.

Sharalike

This site had music, photo, and transitions. It WAS simple to use.  Unfortunately, it seemed as though the text options were limited, which is a big deal for my purposes.