A story with POP!

It has been fun to experiment with digital storytelling. I had fun with popcorn


A little story to share. But what did I learn - (thinking about digital literacy after today's talk by Doug Belshaw).

Be patient - skills learned before transfer to new situations. This was my cognitive aspect kicking in.
I wanted to communicate an idea.
There is definitely a cultural context.
I constructed a video before remixing it via popcorn
Definitely an ounce of creativity.
One part of the message was about friendship - a message about good citizenship - sharing a place where young and old play music together (and not in the video - CAMMAC functions in French and English and no one cares, or knows for that matter, whether you are a doctor or a secretary).
I was not afraid to get my digital fingers into the "pie" and mess around - a bit of confidence.
And sitting back I have a better idea of what popcorn can do - and will think critically about how it fits into what I want students doing.

Thoughts on Tools

I've been thinking about the challenge of using a variety of tools to tell the same story and I'm not sure if that is the best approach. It does help you understand what each tool does, but not every tool lends itself to every story. As I have written before, it is important to look critically at the affordances of the tool to think under what circumstances the tool would work well.

• Can you use the tool collaboratively? 
• How much control do you have over the look? 
• When is this important?
• What medium or combination of media best tell the story?
• How do I want it shared?
• Do you just want something quick and easy? (for what purposes)
• Do you need the story to be hyperlinked? Is this possible with the tool?

These are just some questions to ask. I would love to have you add questions below.

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and some more playing

Five Card Story: Where Does it Lead

a #etmooc story created by susanvg

flickr photo by dmffryed

flickr photo by mrsdkrebs

flickr photo by mrsdkrebs

flickr photo by cogdogblog

flickr photo by debbie.fucoloro
Travelling down a learning path. Sometimes I feel alone, an anomaly in my face to face community. I travel on this voyage of discovery, piquing my curiosity and creativity. Looking for new vistas. Online I find community - fellow seekers. I howl with joy as I find my pack in this wide open space. Serenity in the knowledge that I have fellow travellers.

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Explorations

I really enjoyed the post by Brendan Murphy on rhizomatic learning. He talked about deep learning and how to encourage that both for himself as a learner, but also for his students.

I am experimenting with a variety of tools - feeling a bit like a groundhog - popping up to read and get ideas and then back in my burrow to experiment. Maybe rhizomatic learning for me is also "groundhog learning"

I played a bit with Haiku Deck, a free presentation tool for ipads. It was not quite what I expected - more of a visual powerpoint for ipads. It exports as a powerpoint so I had to turn my 6 word story into an image

I visited Susan Angel's blog. She inspires with her incredible visual sense. My quick attempt at an animated gif using Gimp can be seen below.

What you don't see is the back story - this was part of a concert - with the two in the back singing an aria. I'm thinking hard about how I want to create a meaningful story - what tool would work best for it and why  - about a place that changed my life.

I enjoyed Darren Kuropatwa's session today and really appreciated his parting words - that the most important thing is the story. It doesn't matter how many bells and whistles we add - a story without substance is a bad story.

In these two weeks, much is about playing and experimenting. Erin Luong commented on my last post who said "....however sometimes when we are learning the tools our stories may be more shallow. Thoughts?"

My reply: "

I do agree that as teachers when we play with these tools, often the stories will be shallow. That is because we are concentrating on the tool and thinking about how we can use it with students. Our purpose for using the tool is not about the story but in seeing potential. But when we ask students to produce digital stories we need to emphasize the story and explore together how the tools can make the stories powerful. Students also need time to play and explore - but final products should demonstrate that good choices were made because the story speaks for itself.

I also think that this is about scaffolding. When students are young, we introduce fewer tools. But as part of the process we talk about why the tools are good for certain things - developing a critical sense in students. Later students need to have more leeway to select the tools that best fit their needs and be able to justify why they chose a specific tool."

So above are a few explorations about tools - not so much about story. Writing a good story, deciding on which tool to use, which layer will tell what part of the story requires serious work - time that will have to be spent when I am not in the flurry or reading, exploring in the fast lane of etmooc.

ETMCHAT on a Wednesday evening

I participated in Wednesday's etmchat. I'm getting better at watching the tweets fly by, stopping to read some, skimming over others. It's a test of brain power. As I get older, I keep reading about doing activities that keep the brain flexible. Tweet chats have to qualify with the enormous amount of processing, multi-tasking and connecting.

As I read, I quickly click on links to be visited after the chat. So here are some I explored later.

Someone mentioned cowbird
http://cowbird.com/
I love their byline: Stories: How we make sense of our lives.
Later someone pointed us to the stories of Barbara Ganley on cowbird
http://cowbird.com/barbara-ganley/

The premise is simple - an image and a story. I've been doing that through a photo blog I have, though the story-telling has diminished a bit. It was an interesting process as with each image I was inspired to try different genres from story to editorial writing to poetry.  I started doing the photo blog because I firmly believe as teachers - if we ask students to write, we have to write too.

Bryan Jack shared a post on digital radio http://bryanjack.ca/2012/12/07/web-radio-in-the-k12-classroom/http://bryanjack.ca/2012/12/07/web-radio-in-the-k12-classroom/
I loved listening to the story behind DS106 - linked from his post http://cogdogblog.com/2012/10/21/ds106-radio-rockumentary/http://cogdogblog.com/2012/10/21/ds106-radio-rockumentary/

Someone else shared http://mediaspecialistsguide.blogspot.ca/2011/08/58-sites-for-digital-storytelling-tools.html 
I'm always a little wary about the lists of tools - concerned that the emphasis is on the tool and not on the content. I love digital storytelling - but we have to put the emphasis on the storytelling with the digital being the way we can make the stories more powerful - adding images, video, transitions, music with a purpose - so that each layer strengthens the story. We have to be cautious to avoid the powerpointlessness syndrome of animations and transitions that add nothing to the message. I have spent time reading Joe Lambert's Digital Storytelling Cookbook and one thing always stood out for me - "the gift of your voice"
Don't get me wrong - I love these tools - but we have to look at them with a critical eye and think about what each offers and how they can be used for specific stories. While I like Animoto - I don't like the fact that so much is canned - that most of the creativity is given over to Animoto. Not bad for a quick upload to show off photos from a day at school - but not great for a deep story.

Winter in Quebec

  Not sure if this link was shared last night - but from Wes Fryer http://teachdigital.pbworks.com/w/page/19791043/ds I highly respect the work he has done. His book Playing with Media has many great ideas for K12 schools

Some stories I have loved to share in workshops:
I adore Connor's story - a great place to explore and think about what the student had to do to prepare for this production. And think about what his voice adds!
http://www.dtc.scott.k12.ky.us/technology/digitalstorytelling/connor_T1.mov
 Visit SFETT - started by Marco Torres. There is a large collection of student made videos
or visit the youtube channel of the Center for Digital Storytelling (adult made stories).

So much to explore. So much to learn. Keeps me young!

Walking the Talk

I think one of the reasons I joined etmooc was to force myself to "walk the talk." I give workshops to teachers - one of which is on digital storytelling. I know about the power of story and encourage teachers to help their students to become more powerful storytellers. We talk about the use of the different layers of the story. Each (image, text, voice, music, timing...) should compliment each other, adding a new dimension to the story. But how many digital stories have I made?

So here is my iMovie attempt. I'll be exploring other ways of creating stories over the next couple of weeks (iPad apps, online apps...)