Saturday, March 24, 2007

Stories are much more than entertainment...

Digital Storytelling in the Classroom: New Media Pathways to Literacy, Learning and Creativity (Corwin Press, due out in August, 2007) begins with the chapter "Twenty Revelations about Digital Storytelling in Education." We are up to revelation 10 in this journal. The first nine can be found in previous journal issues. [ Buy book | Read more about it ]

Revelation #10: Story provides so much more than entertainment. It provides a powerful metaphor, framework and set of practical processes for resolving issues, educating ourselves, and pursuing our dreams.

The same story structure that frames much of our popular media can be used to understand and resolve conflict, overcome obstacles and mine opportunities.

We have the potential to become heroes of our own life stories in which learning is our quest and ignorance and fear are the dragons that need to be slain as we seek to resolve the issues that face us.

Friday, March 9, 2007

The attitude is the aptitude...

Excerpted from Jason's new book, Digital Storytelling in the Classroom: New Media Pathways to Literacy, Learning and Creativity...

Revelation #9: The attitude is the aptitude.


Because billions of bits of data hit the Net each hour, and because radio, TV, newspaper, magazines and the rest of the media tecosystem contributors continue to crank like there's no tomorrow, life-long learning has become a pervasive, immediate and on-going lifestyle.

The result is that the attitude has become the aptitude.

That is, your attitude toward learning new things – as well as your willingness to let go of obsolete information – plays an important role in determining your aptitude and intelligence. Digital storytelling represents one of those areas that tests educators' attitudes about the evolution of learning, not only in terms of tools, but also in terms of the nature of literacy and the kinds of classroom communities they want to support.