Vision of the Future

My Final Vision project is a guide to digital storytelling, which stayed true to my brainstormed outline, which you can read in my last post here. Most of it is a curated list of apps and resources, but the most significant portion of the project ended up being an approximately 5 minute video that I storyboarded, filmed, found sound effects/music,  and recorded voice-overs for. 

There were two major changes from my initial vision for the project. The first was that I had initially wanted to use Adobe Spark Page to compile the guide, as I hadn’t worked with it before and I thought it would be suitable. The more I worked with it, though, the more I realized that it wasn’t ideal for a project of this size; it provided no way to jump between sections of the page. I was worried that this would decrease the accessibility and ease of use, so I made a mid-project move to Microsoft Sway. Sway has a feature that allows you to jump from heading to heading in the document that works well on both computers and devices with touch and non-touch screens, and when I sent examples of both to friends, the Sway version always won. 

Secondly, I had said that I was going to use the simpler Adobe Spark Video editor to compile my how-to video. While I think that the production value might have been nicer if I had stuck to that model, there were many features that I could not get access to (like having the capability for 2-3 audio files at a time and autokey for green screen , for example). And thus, I decided to bring out Adobe Premiere Pro – which I had never used before last week. Fortunately, there are officially YouTube tutorials for E V E R Y T H I N G and although I could hardly upload a clip into a sequence at first and spent 20 minutes trying to unlink video and audio files from one another, by the end I felt… moderately successful. I learned some important lessons about ensuring consistent screen size between video clips that will come in handy the next time I do this. It was a big project – but I wasn’t going anywhere last week (spring break here in Manitoba, on top of school being suspended) so what else was I going to do? 

I am thankful for the opportunity to be able to play with and try out some technology and tech skills I had never personally used before. This included time-lapse video, trying out the new Samson Meteor Mics that I got for a podcasting station at school, and green screens. It was overwhelming to look through all the apps and programs that are out there that could be used for digital storytelling. Ultimately, I tried to keep my recommendations limited to an entry level + a slightly more complex option for most types of apps. There are still so many things that I could have/maybe should have listed. However, I tell myself that this project can be updated as I find new and wonderful things to try. If you have any suggestions, I’m all ears! 

Below you will find a video that shows you how you can navigate through my project from section to section. I think that it’s best viewed from start to finish, but if you are returning to refer to a specific resource – the navigation is handy.  

The cornerstone of the project is definitely my how-to video, but there are other videos to check out. The ones in the app section are simply to give a bit more background into some of the apps. I do recommend watching the example projects at the end. I’m pretty fond of those. So… without further ado here’s my project:

https://bit.ly/477storytelling – this is rather anticlimactic – sadly WordPress doesn’t support iframe embeds 🙁

If you know someone who could use it – send it their way 🙂 

If you’d rather just watch the digital story about digital storytelling that I made, you can just watch the video below.

It’s been a pleasure getting to know and work with you all over the last several months. Although I probably won’t see you at any PD (unless you’re making a trip to Manitoba), I look forward to keeping an eye on your blogs and Twitter feeds. Until then.  To those of you who are done your course work – congrats!

All the best, keep your distance and wash your hands,  

Morgan 

Whelp. I’m finally coming up for air. This past week has seen the world change forever in my neck of the woods and probably yours too. You maybe are even a week or more into it. Fortunately I was a bit ahead of myself in my coursework – but I know that I haven’t even looked at other blog posts from last week yet. Now that we are no longer in class, I will have a bit of time to sit down and catch up.

Everything that I have written below in black font, was written in the world before. Now, as we in Manitoba enter this new world, my coursework seems to be even more important and relevant. How do I teach students to do these things from a distance, with no consistent technological access? Stay tuned.

Keep calm, wash your hands and stay at home, friends.

Last week, I set up a beginning outline for my final vision assignment. The project would be posted using Adobe Spark Page, and would be a digital trove of information on Digital Storytelling. I envision it as a website/article hybrid. This project would be designed mainly as a resource for teachers who don’t know where to start with digital storytelling in the classroom. The outline is tentatively as follows,  

1) What is digital storytelling? 

2) Why you should be doing it. 

3) A step by step guide – featuring a digital story how-to video made with the Adobe Creative Cloud.

4) Lists of helpful apps and programs.

5) ‘Tips and Tricks’ videos.

6) Some sample project ideas. 

7) Useful handouts for students.

8) Some examples of digital storytelling projects.

It’s funny how the human brain works. Until I sat down and looked at this week’s question, I had never really thought of framing this project in any way other than at other teachers. It is interesting to me that my brain went so automatically to something aimed at educators rather than students. There probably is a definite need for resources on digital storytelling for students, in student friendly language. In many ways the best learning is that which is self-motivated.  

I was reminded of this on Sunday, driving while listening to the program Tapestry on CBC Radio.  Frank Kadillac, the Juno nominated singer of pop duo Neon Dreams, was being interviewed. I was struck listening to Frank as he talked about falling in love with the guitar as a kid – wanting one so badly that he drew out a paper fret board and strings on four sheets of paper and practiced playing chords and songs from tabs that he found on the internet. This kid took a marker and the internet and turned it into a career. I want to help kids do that. 

But, then I am torn by the knowledge that frequently the teacher is the person who makes project decisions in the classroom, and so I need to make them more likely to buy into this as an option. And what is it that makes some of our staff such reluctant technology integrators? Factors that get in the way of teacher usage of technology have been reported to include things like “negative attitudes towards computers, technology incompetence, passive school support policy, different pedagogical beliefs and limited access to technology tools” (Chen et al, 2019). Another study concluded that beliefs about what makes a “good” education needs to be a part of any professional development for teachers (Tondeur et al, 2016). My main audience are the teachers who are less likely to use technology in innovative ways with their classes. 

To counter this, I am going to include rationale in my project, connecting Digital Storytelling to 21^st century skills to help tie this to modern knowledge about what constitutes a good education.  To help with feelings of technological incompetence and negative attitudes towards computers, I will provide step by step instructions and offer to join teachers as a co-teacher when they are providing Digital Storytelling opportunities to their class, or run smaller sessions where I completely take the lead. I hope that this project will work towards providing support to teachers, alleviating feelings of a lack of support from the school. To ward off limited access issues, I have planned to teach basics using operating systems and programs that we have access through our division and/or that are available across different platforms.  

Why was I so set on planning this for educators? Ultimately, I do see my main audience as being teachers. However, I want many of the materials (especially videos) to be accessible to a student audience. They should be able to be used by educators as part of the digital storytelling experience in their classrooms. This is important for me to consider as I continue storyboarding and planning over the coming week –  this project will hopefully create a grab-and-go kit for teachers to use with their students. While teachers are my main audience, I must keep students in mind. 

Sources

CBC Radio. (2020, March 13). “I’m gonna do my best to make music for people to heal to,” says Juno-nominated Frank Kadillac of Neon Dreams. CBC. https://www.cbc.ca/radio/tapestry/i-m-gonna-do-my-best-to-make-music-for-people-to-heal-to-says-juno-nominated-frank-kadillac-of-neon-dreams-1.5492657

‌Chen, M., Zhou, C., Meng, C. et al. How to promote Chinese primary and secondary school teachers to use ICT to develop high-quality teaching activities. Education Tech Research Dev 67, 1593–1611 (2019). https://doi-org.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/10.1007/s11423-019-09677-0 

Tondeur, J., van Braak, J., Ertmer, P.A. et al. Understanding the relationship between teachers’ pedagogical beliefs and technology use in education: a systematic review of qualitative evidence. Education Tech Research Dev 65, 555–575 (2017). https://doi-org.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/10.1007/s11423-016-9481-2 

Image Source

Numerous targets on a wall with darts in them. [Photo]. Retrieved from Encyclopædia Britannica ImageQuest.
https://quest.eb.com/search/167_3991301/1/167_3991301/cite

This week’s assignment has left me feeling a tad overwhelmed. At the start of the course, I focused on Digital Storytelling, which you can read more about in posts here (in which I narrow down my topics of interest), here (in which I find pertinent resources) and here (in which I ruminate on what I found and didn’t find). At the end of Reading Review 3, I bemoaned the fact that while I could find lots of information out there for the who, what, when, where and why of digital storytelling; I felt like there needed to be a how. 

And so, I’m thinking that a how-to is the next step. But what exactly am I how-to-ing? A key idea about Digital Storytelling is that it’s anything that contains digital multimodalities to create meaning – this could be countless things. What format do I choose then?  

Another issue that has caused me some grief is that I want this project to somehow create connections between people, ideally on a global level. Simply putting something out there on the internet doesn’t mean others are going to engage with it at all. And this project might rely on technologies that are out of reach for many around the globe. How do I reconcile myself with these issues? I do not have an answer to this question. 

Potential final project ideas or parts

After some brainstorming, I had several potential options:

– Create a digital video using Adobe Premiere Pro explaining the how-to process for creating a digital story. This would take viewers through the steps of planning and creating a digital story through my story of completing this course. 

– Use Adobe Spark Page to create an interactive how-to guide, less focused on video created by myself and instead linking to content created by others, but still working through the process and tips for digital storytelling. 

– Same as above but use Microsoft Sway. 

– Create a green screen tutorial to share with students and staff. 

– Create a sample student project, complete with an example, outline and important resources. 

– Some combination of the above, most likely an interactive digital how-to-guide with examples and including a resource collection of important materials and documents to provide for students during the planning phase, and apps that they might use during creation. 

I think I’m leaning towards the last example, with a combination of video created by myself, and linked resources from others. Because there is so much to do for this project, I probably won’t use Premiere Pro, but will instead use Spark Video, which seems like it has a much gentler learning curve. It also has fewer features, but I feel like going all out might be a bit overwhelming for students and staff anyway. 

We do have a Mac in the library that I could use for video editing, but 99% of the computers in the school run on Microsoft, so it makes sense to use the OS that the majority of students can access. All Grade 7 students in the division have just received access to many Adobe Creative Cloud programs, so it makes sense to use these resources. These can also be accessed from the small set of iPads that we have in the library, so it is accessible even on different operating systems. This work could also be done on student owned devices. 

Alright, but what’s the plan, Stan?

Right now, my planned outline looks like the following, which will be ultimately hosted using Adobe Spark Page, and featuring embedded videos and content. 

1) What is digital storytelling?

2) Why you should be doing it.

3) A step by step guide – featuring self made video edited using Spark Video.

4) Lists of helpful apps and programs 

5) ‘Tips and Trick’ videos (so far I have brainstormed that this should include green screen tips, storyboarding info, links to sites for CC images/sounds/videos) 

6) Some sample project ideas

7) Useful handouts for students (linked) 

8) Some example digital storytelling projects

In my last week’s blog post,  a reflection on our inquiry posts of the previous four weeks that you can see here I observed that the thread that wove our research together has been connection. I think in many ways, this project will serve this purpose. Students will be connected to important literacies that they are going to need in the future. Digital, technological, visual and information literacies are all readily apparent in the digital storytelling process through student use of cameras, production software, collecting appropriate multimedia, and the use of these things to create a more profound meaning. Students will also be connected to important skills like researching, writing, organization, technology, presentation, interviewing, interpersonal, problem solving and assessment.

Recently, I was fortunate enough to take a day’s Professional Development with Garfield Gini-Newman, and it focused heavily on the importance of creating rich learning tasks that don’t necessarily have a correct answer. I think that digital storytelling is just that; a truly rich learning task that will “challenge them to think and allow them to deepen their understanding over a period of time” (Newman & Case, 2018, p. 218). We can’t tell someone that their story is wrong, we can only suggest strategies to strengthen its telling. This will also hopefully give students the ability to connect what they are learning to themselves personally. 

When I am complete, I hope this project will connect teachers to the resources they need to start storytelling in their classrooms and give them the skills necessary to expand beyond the walls of their classrooms. I hope that it will also remind them of all the great Creative Commons resources that are available for use in multimedia projects. 

Sources

Gini-Newman, G., & Case, R. (2018). Creating thinking classrooms : leading educational change for this century. A Sage Company.

Sandu, A. (2017, September 28). 120+ Places To Find Creative Commons Media. SitePoint. https://www.sitepoint.com/creative-commons-sources/

Image Source

Future of the Earth, conceptual image. [Photograph]. Retrieved from Encyclopædia Britannica ImageQuest.
https://quest.eb.com/search/132_1352780/1/132_1352780/cite