Excerpted from Jason's new book, Digital Storytelling in the Classroom: New Media Pathways to Literacy, Learning and Creativity...
Revelation #8: Learning communities are primarily storytelling communities.
That’s when another revelation hit me: learning communities are primarily storytelling communities. Stories permeate our social fabric and have the primary function of teaching others, whether formally or informally. When you get right down to it, much of the communication that transpires among people, whether in a classroom, an office, or a living room, consists of telling stories.
I began to see and hear stories all around me, like a kind of social, emotional and psychological air we all breathed to stay alive. It become clear to me that our dependence on stories was deep and pervasive.
Sunday, January 28, 2007
Saturday, January 27, 2007
Don't enable the technophile at the expense of the storyteller...
Excerpted from Jason's new book, Digital Storytelling in the Classroom: New Media Pathways to Literacy, Learning and Creativity...
Revelation #7: Don't enable the technophile at the expense of the storyteller.
To make sure I didn't enable the technophile at the expense of the storyteller I began incorporating storytelling basics into every class in which telling a story was a focus. I even brought in an oral storyteller to help my students learn how to plan, write and tell stories in front of people in traditional fashion.
I then helped my students transition from oral to digital stories, applying the tools in service of the story rather than vice versa. And lo, the quality of my students' digital stories rose dramatically. A result of this discovery is that I have included oral storytelling in my digital storytelling workshops whenever possible ever since.
Revelation #7: Don't enable the technophile at the expense of the storyteller.
To make sure I didn't enable the technophile at the expense of the storyteller I began incorporating storytelling basics into every class in which telling a story was a focus. I even brought in an oral storyteller to help my students learn how to plan, write and tell stories in front of people in traditional fashion.
I then helped my students transition from oral to digital stories, applying the tools in service of the story rather than vice versa. And lo, the quality of my students' digital stories rose dramatically. A result of this discovery is that I have included oral storytelling in my digital storytelling workshops whenever possible ever since.
Thursday, January 25, 2007
What happens when you give a bad guitar player a bigger amplifier?
Excerpted from Jason's new book, Digital Storytelling in the Classroom: New Media Pathways to Literacy, Learning and Creativity...
Revelation #6: What happens when you give a bad guitar player a bigger amplifier? If you don't have a good story to tell, using technology to tell it will just make that more obvious.
While I have welcomed the increased expression that the evolution of graphic, audio-video and other tools have brought to digital storytelling students, many years ago I realized something very interesting: as the technology became stronger, some of my students' stories became weaker. Some students seemed to have an intuitive grasp of using new technology powerfully and artfully, while others didn't.
In fact, for them the "story" part of their digital stories were getting worse.
It became my goal many years ago as a digital storytelling teacher to make sure that I was not enabling the technophile at the expense of the storyteller in my students.
Revelation #6: What happens when you give a bad guitar player a bigger amplifier? If you don't have a good story to tell, using technology to tell it will just make that more obvious.
While I have welcomed the increased expression that the evolution of graphic, audio-video and other tools have brought to digital storytelling students, many years ago I realized something very interesting: as the technology became stronger, some of my students' stories became weaker. Some students seemed to have an intuitive grasp of using new technology powerfully and artfully, while others didn't.
In fact, for them the "story" part of their digital stories were getting worse.
It became my goal many years ago as a digital storytelling teacher to make sure that I was not enabling the technophile at the expense of the storyteller in my students.
Tuesday, January 23, 2007
Art is the 4th R...
Excerpted from Jason's new book, Digital Storytelling in the Classroom: New Media Pathways to Literacy, Learning and Creativity...
Revelation #5: Thanks to our struggle to use multimedia effectively, Art is becoming the next literacy, or the 4th R.
In fact, it is largely because of the Internet and the need for an international Esperanto for our global village that art is becoming the “4th R” and “story” is becoming a key format for global communication. Because we now expect students to produce multimedia homework assignments, including web pages, PowerPoint presentations, and digital stories, the language of art and design is taking center stage. Once a hard sell for a practical public, art is becoming as important for workplace success and personal fulfillment as the other 3 Rs.
For more about this, I invite you to go to the Art the 4th R web site (jasonohler.com/fourthr).
Revelation #5: Thanks to our struggle to use multimedia effectively, Art is becoming the next literacy, or the 4th R.
In fact, it is largely because of the Internet and the need for an international Esperanto for our global village that art is becoming the “4th R” and “story” is becoming a key format for global communication. Because we now expect students to produce multimedia homework assignments, including web pages, PowerPoint presentations, and digital stories, the language of art and design is taking center stage. Once a hard sell for a practical public, art is becoming as important for workplace success and personal fulfillment as the other 3 Rs.
For more about this, I invite you to go to the Art the 4th R web site (jasonohler.com/fourthr).
Monday, January 22, 2007
The digital revolution in a sentence: Finally everyone gets to tell their own story in their own way on the great stage of the Internet...
Excerpted from Jason's new book, Digital Storytelling in the Classroom: New Media Pathways to Literacy, Learning and Creativity...
Revelation #4: The digital revolution in a sentence: Finally everyone gets to tell their own story in their own way on the great stage of the Internet.
In fact, if I had to summarize the Digital Age in a sentence it would be this: finally everyone gets to tell their own story in their own way. Digital cameras, painting programs, music keyboards and word processors – as well as all those technologies just around the corner that we can’t even imagine right now – give us new ways to personalize the methods of self-expression. We get to explore new communication forms with relative impunity because we can try out an idea and then change our minds, something that’s hard to do using a typewriter or a paintbrush. And thanks to the Internet, we have an international stage for the stories we tell.
Revelation #4: The digital revolution in a sentence: Finally everyone gets to tell their own story in their own way on the great stage of the Internet.
In fact, if I had to summarize the Digital Age in a sentence it would be this: finally everyone gets to tell their own story in their own way. Digital cameras, painting programs, music keyboards and word processors – as well as all those technologies just around the corner that we can’t even imagine right now – give us new ways to personalize the methods of self-expression. We get to explore new communication forms with relative impunity because we can try out an idea and then change our minds, something that’s hard to do using a typewriter or a paintbrush. And thanks to the Internet, we have an international stage for the stories we tell.
Digital technology is assistive technology for the aesthetically challenged...
Excerpted from Jason's new book, Digital Storytelling in the Classroom: New Media Pathways to Literacy, Learning and Creativity...
Revelation #3: Digital technology is assistive technology for the aesthetically challenged.
I think of the tools of the Digital Age as being “assistive technologies for the aesthetically challenged.” They give the rest of us who didn’t learn how to use a typewriter or play a piano or wield a paintbrush a chance to tell a story.
Revelation #3: Digital technology is assistive technology for the aesthetically challenged.
I think of the tools of the Digital Age as being “assistive technologies for the aesthetically challenged.” They give the rest of us who didn’t learn how to use a typewriter or play a piano or wield a paintbrush a chance to tell a story.
Saturday, January 20, 2007
The digital revolution would have begun very differently if early computers had booted up in a word processor...
Excerpted from Jason's new book, Digital Storytelling in the Classroom: New Media Pathways to Literacy, Learning and Creativity...
Revelation #2: The digital revolution would have begun very differently if early computers had booted up in a word processor rather than a programming language.
It is hard to imagine, but in the early 1980s there wasn’t really any software! Word processors, spreadsheets and image editing programs were still far into the future. Computers booted up in a programming language, which was fine for the engineers among us. The rest of us would dig deep to find the programmer within and succeed after a fashion, despite our liberal arts degrees.
Even though programming was a calling few of us had, that didn’t stop me from using computers as storytelling machines. One of the first computer assignments I gave my high school students was to write a computer program that told a story about the values and principles that guided their lives. Despite clunky keyboards, fuzzy screens and truly inelegant software, the light of their stories shone through.
I have been involved with digital storytelling since the earliest days of personal computing, and although the tools have changed dramatically over the years, the nature of a good story – as well as the need to tell a good story – has not.
Revelation #2: The digital revolution would have begun very differently if early computers had booted up in a word processor rather than a programming language.
It is hard to imagine, but in the early 1980s there wasn’t really any software! Word processors, spreadsheets and image editing programs were still far into the future. Computers booted up in a programming language, which was fine for the engineers among us. The rest of us would dig deep to find the programmer within and succeed after a fashion, despite our liberal arts degrees.
Even though programming was a calling few of us had, that didn’t stop me from using computers as storytelling machines. One of the first computer assignments I gave my high school students was to write a computer program that told a story about the values and principles that guided their lives. Despite clunky keyboards, fuzzy screens and truly inelegant software, the light of their stories shone through.
I have been involved with digital storytelling since the earliest days of personal computing, and although the tools have changed dramatically over the years, the nature of a good story – as well as the need to tell a good story – has not.
Friday, January 19, 2007
I know only one thing about the technology that awaits us in the future: we will find ways to tell stories with it...
Excerpted from Jason's new book, Digital Storytelling in the Classroom: New Media Pathways to Literacy, Learning and Creativity...
Revelation #1: I know only one thing about the technology that awaits us in the future: we will find ways to tell stories with it.
Once upon a time… long ago, during the early, dark days of the Digital Age (circa 1980), when the Internet was a secret information club for government officials, icons were religious symbols and iPods were something peas came in, the early adopters of digital technology used the crude tools of their day to create what we now recognize as “digital stories.”
Digital stories are simply the latest manifestation of one of humankind’s oldest activities: storytelling. As we are continually swept away by the latest wave of leading edge innovation, it’s reassuring to know that some things don’t change. From the age of prehistoric cave dwellers to the age of post-modern computer digitalists, our need to tell stories is one of those things.
Revelation #1: I know only one thing about the technology that awaits us in the future: we will find ways to tell stories with it.
Once upon a time… long ago, during the early, dark days of the Digital Age (circa 1980), when the Internet was a secret information club for government officials, icons were religious symbols and iPods were something peas came in, the early adopters of digital technology used the crude tools of their day to create what we now recognize as “digital stories.”
Digital stories are simply the latest manifestation of one of humankind’s oldest activities: storytelling. As we are continually swept away by the latest wave of leading edge innovation, it’s reassuring to know that some things don’t change. From the age of prehistoric cave dwellers to the age of post-modern computer digitalists, our need to tell stories is one of those things.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
