TechForum Chicago 2005

Joe Brennan and I had a nice experience presenting to a group of about 45 people on digital storytelling at TechForum 2005. Most were beginners to the process which was good, several individuals had used storytelling in conjunction with student portfolio work. Unfortunately, we lost about 15 minutes of the presentation to the roundtables finishing late. One of the things we didn't get to was a thorough discussion of ways to enlarge the presentation to begin building a learning community centered on digital storytelling. Many of us are beginning (and some have known for a while now) about the power of community as a learning environment. I really like the way Ebay describes it as "the power of all of us."

Let me explain some of the resources available to not only the people at the presentation, but anyone who reads this blog. First, presentation resources for the TechForum presentation are available at Jakesonline.org, as well as a specific collection of digital storytelling resources.

Additionally, anyone who is interested can subscribe to my digital storytelling feed from del.icio.us. If you are not familiar with del.icio.us, it's a social bookmarking Web site. Get an account, add your favorite Web sites, organize them by tags, and syndicate the list by using the RSS feed that the site produces for your Web links. If you are not familiar with social software such as del.icio.us and Furl, as well as RSS and tags, please read my very simple article about these tools.

Finally, there is an opportunity to contribute to StoryWiki, a set of Web pages constructed by collaborative thought. I've created several pages for various topics; these pages are for public view and public edit. That means anyone can edit the pages...go to StoryWiki, click on a topic and start adding your content or editing someone elses. It's the Web at its finest, complete collaborative Web page construction through a simple type and submit interface. A sideline-I would challenge you to try StoryWiki and think of creative ways to use Wikis with students-add those comments to the section of JakesWiki that focuses on Wiki ideas. By the way, my Wiki is published through EditMe and costs $4.95 per month-all that capability for less than I pay for a lunch. Amazing. Also, if interested, you can get a free Wiki at SeedWiki.com.

The Power of All of Us. Think about it. In Steve Dembo's posts of today at Teach42 about TechForum, Steve talks about having a room full of creative, intelligent people, who are being lectured to and are sitting as passive learners, certainly not 21st Century learning. Perhaps we can begin taking a first step towards changing/adding to conference effectiveness by contributing additional resources that serve to extend the conference and connect people and ideas in a way that helps individuals actually practice and become comfortable with 21st century open source thinking and learning.

Accomplishment vs. Learning

I am constantly challenged about the worth of digital storytelling as a learning process. That's okay-I should be able to supply a set of reasons that are educationally sound. Not a problem. We can begin by linking the process of digital storytelling, which I think is the most exciting educational technology process that I have ever seen (more on that later), to the skill set known as 21st Century Skills- the process satisfies about 80% of the standards. That's pretty good but that's for a later discussion.

What I would like to talk about in this blog entry is not what students learn, but what do they accomplish? I have had a students produce a number of wonderful stories and surprisingly, many are therapeutic in nature. I've had a student who never talked in class and was the type of kid not many other kids would approach, write about the true friends he found online, and how he didn't want to be the way he was, but that's who he was. What did he learn-probably a little about technology, probably some more about writing and you can probably make a strong argument that this student did not learn that much, but what he accomplished was amazing because I saw the reaction of his classmates when we showed the story. This kid would have never given this as an oral presentation, but the medium of digital storytelling enabled the kid to have a voice, to explain who and what he was to his peers, and I could see that they definately had a different perspective of who he was.

How about another student who has a disability that makes him a selective mute-and as a result has difficulty communicating (as would be expected). How much of a breakthrough is it for that kid just to record the voice-over component of the story? How much did the student learn? How much did the student accomplish?

What if a student had a baby brother who died and told a story of what it was like to have a brother for two days. And what if the student's other brothers were not alive when all this happened, and what if that student had an opportunity to make a digital story to introduce the deceased brother to her other two. How much did the student learn? How much did the student accomplish?

Could these students have accomplished the same thing in writing? Perhaps. But digital storytelling enlarges the boundries of who we touch, with whom we share, and with whom we impact. The potential audience is world-wide.

I have many more stories like this. Our kids have stories that need to be told. Digital storytelling allows them to do this. When we stop giving kids the opportunity to accomplish, rather than just learn, we have truly failed as educators.

The Competitive Voice

Several years ago I saw David Warlick speak and I don't remember the topic, but David was talking about providing students with a competitive voice in a mediacentric world. So, I've borrowed his phrase (I don't think David would mind) to title my new blog about the process of digital storytelling. I've been using this technique with my teachers and students in my school district with very gratifying results-the process truly does give young adults a platform for discussing, composing, and sharing what they think. Much has been written recently about blogs and the ability of this medium for constructive thought-no one will argue with the sheer ability of a tool where people can be publishing for a potential global audience, all within about 5 minutes. But digital storytelling takes all that several steps further, with the message now composed of voice, video, imagery and music-way beyond just text and hyperlinks. The message becomes a blend of thought and music and imagery that can extraordinarily powerful. In my next post, I'll discuss what students actually accomplish-please note that I did not say learn...